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PEEILS OF POPERY, 



ESPECIALLY CONSIDERED 



WITH REFERENCE TO THE 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



BY REV. JOHN BARTON. 



CINCINNATI: 
HENRY W. DERBY & CO 

M DCCC XLV. 






"Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1845, by 
By John Barton and J. B. Peat. 
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Ohio. 



v 



ADVERTISEMENT 



The Author owes an apology to the public 
for the numerous imperfections with which his 
work appears. But as an extended one would 
involve a detail which would be neither inter- 
esting to them nor agreeable to himself, he be- 
speaks their indulgence for it; only adding, that 
his unavoidable absence a great part of the time 
while it was issuing from the press, and the 
haste with which he was compelled to glance 
over most of what he did superintend, will, he 
hopes, be deemed a sufficient claim upon that 
indulgence. 



ERRATA. 

Page 38, read, " To exalt the Papacy was to exalt the Church, to ag- 
grandize religion," &c. Page 44, for "Romans," read conquered by 
the Normans. Page 98, after the semi-colon in the eleventh line, add 
the words, or to believe. Page 119, for "enorties" read enormities. 
Page 141, before the word "tawdry," insert the words mass of. Page 
152, the poetic lines should conclude His "foe ;" and for "mental" read 
mutual. Page 164, for "all" read altogether " invulnerable." Page 
166, instead of "so exist within a society like ours," read, co-exist with 
a government Uke ours. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PART FIRST. 

CHAPTER I. 

INFALLIBILITY CONSIDERED. - - 17 

CHAPTER II. 

POPERY SUBVERSIVE OF RELIGION AND SOCIAL ORDER. 35 

CHAPTER III. 

REFLECTIONS ON THE ANTI-REPUBLICAN AND ANTI- 
SOCIAL ASPECTS OF POPERY CONTINUED, AND AP- 
PLIED TO THE PECULIAR INSTITUTIONS OF REPUB- 
LICAN NORTH AMERICA. - - - - - 66 

CHAPTER IV. 

POPERY NOT CHANGED FOR THE BETTER, - 99 



PART SECOND. 

CHAPTER I. 

PROSPECTS OF POPERY IN ENGLAND, - 139 

CHAPTER II. 

PROSPECTS OF POPERY IN THE UNITED STATES. 

Proselytation. — Emigration. — Political Associations.-— 
National Indifference. - 149 



VI TABLE OP CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER III. 

GENERAL PROSPECTS OF POPERY. - 196 

CHAPTER IV. 

CONCLUSION. 

The Remedy. — A variety of Reflections. - - - 207 

APPENDIX. 

Latest (or Trentine) edition of Popery. — A Voice from 
the Basilic of St. Peter, or Pope Gregory Sixteenth's 
Bull against the American Christian League and Bible 
Society.— Who shall teach China? — Statistics, &c. • 223 



PERILS OF POPERY 



PART FIRST. 



INTRODUCTION. 



We wrestle against spiritual wickedness in high places. 

Eph. vi. 12. 

"All that has been done hitherto," said the great 
Saxon reformer, in answer to the fears of a timo- 
rous friend, — u All that has been done hitherto is 
mere play. * * * * The tumult is continually 
growing more and more tumultuous; nor do I 
think that it will ever be appeased until the last 
day !" " Three centuries have passed away," adds 
a recent historian of the Reformation, " and the 
tumult is not appeased yet." The battle, re- 
newed from its temporary suspension, waxes 
hotter and hotter. The cessation from vigorous 
and general hostilities seems to have been only 
the dreadful pause of exhausted armies, during 
which they meditate new plans of attack, and 
ominous of a more fearful and deadly struggle. 
The silence for years past has been broken but 
by occasional rencounters ; but the crisis has 
arrived when the embattled hosts are taking the 
field. The world is in expectancy and commo- 
tion ; strange and mysterious events have already 

A 



VI INTRODUCTION. 

occurred; conjecture is at a loss to anticipate 
the scenes which are to follow these preliminary 
evolutions : nor is it improbable that the period is 
not far distant, when kings and potentates shall 
mingle in the gathering storm at the head of their 
battallions, the nations of the earth take sides, and 
the loud peal of universal uproar convulse the 
welkin and shake the solid globe. 

Say not, Christians, that we are already amid 
the millenial glory, — that the voice of prophecy 
assures us that the reign of error is at an end — 
that the universal triumph of Christ's kingdom 
has commenced — that no hard contested battle 
must be fought, and victory never again shall 
perch on the alien standard. It is folly to indulge 
vain and improbable presumptions without the 
shadow of just premises. I might add, many 
eminent divines and commentators have favored 
the opinion, as most agreeable to the prophetic 
record, that Popery is again to revive, and how- 
ever short its period, have another reign on earth, 
ere it is utterly consumed by the Spirit of His 
mouth and brightness of His coming, under whose 
feet all His enemies must ultimately be crushed. 

The Apocalyptic beast exhibits all the symp- 
toms of returning vitality, and energy, and effort, 
to regain his lost dominion. Popery, awaking 



INTRODUCTION. Vll 

from the slumber of centuries, recovering from 
the torpedo-touch of the Reformation, has sprung 
from her lethargy, and started from her couch of 
repose, with a seemingly freshened vigor, to re- 
trieve her waning fortunes in the earth, — to at- 
tempt the empire of the world to St. Peter's Chair, 
and in the use of his two-edged sword. 

To the efforts of the Jesuits is to be chiefly 
ascribed the confessed renovation of the decaying 
powers and dormant energies of Popery. Within 
the period of the re-existence of this order, the 
resuscitated zeal of Popery has followed in the 
wake of our Christian missionaries, to Syria, to 
Persia, to Hindostan, the coast of Africa, the 
Sandwich Islands, and other countries; where 
they are scattering the tares of death, to spring up 
amid the seed of life which these holy men have 
gone forth to sow, in those uncultivated regions 
of the earth. It has raised its humbled crest in 
Protestant Europe, to the discomfit and amaze- 
ment of its enemies, and thrown the thinking 
world into excited apprehension and alarm. And 
no cost nor toil is spared in this country for the 
purpose of securing to it a controlling influence in 
our great Western Valley, and thereby a political 
predominance in this country at large, and an ex- 
pansion of its power and influence, which will be 



V1U INTRODUCTION. 

felt throughout the civilized world; since no 
great civil or religious revolution can be effected 
in one hemisphere without a sympathetic action 
on the other. 

The Arch-fiend, according to the prince of 
modern poets, hurled from the heights of heaven 
with his rebel crew, into the abysses of the in- 
fernal deep, for rearing the standard of revolt in 
the neighbourhood of the Eternal Throne, which 
he aspired to usurp, so lately vanquished, scathed 
and confounded, maliciously meditated the ruin 
of this new-formed and ill-fated globe, 



in bigness as a star 



Of smallest magnitude close by the moon. 
Thither, full fraught with mischievous revenge, 
Accurs'd and in a cursed hour, he hies. 

Ah, little did our first parents, adorned with 
spotless innocence, suspect the danger near! Little 
did they dream that "in- 'that serpent-form was 
couched a fallen Arch-angel — that from that 
tongue of guile flowed forth the honeyed accents 
of the father of lies — that from that audience to 
the tempter, that fatal audience, should spring 
diseases, and deaths, and woes, and curses upon 
their latest posterity. 



INTRODUCTION. IX" 

Like the first tempter of our race, and equally 
malign, Antichrist — cast down by the strong arm 
of Providence from his lofty orbit of assumption, 
where he aimed to supersede the Divine glory 
— recovering from the confusion of his fall, having 
fixed his eagle eye upon this land of liberty, tra- 
versed the deep, and has planted his dark stand- 
ard in this New World, As the prince of darkness 
sought, perchance, the recovery of Heaven by 
some circuitous route, so he meditates the reco- 
very of earth. And with the serpent's subtlety, 
and with his crooked course, and with his hum- 
bled mien, and with his poisonous fangs, and 
speckled and basking in the sun-beams of our 
glorious liberty — the Arch-Crusader is amongst us. 
From his own blasted, once glorious region, 
on another continent, he would come to wither up 
our fair country also. Thrown from his high 
sphere of usurped authority, he may hazard at 
least another effort, and spare no cost nor labor to 
plant his throne upon the demolished institutions 
of our Union, and consolidate the world into a 
universal empire. Ah, little are the American 
people aware of the deep design, the well-con- 
cocted scheme, and the busy hands which ply 
the shuttle, weaving the intended shroud of our 
country's glory. 



INTRODUCTION. 



This subject equally addresses itself to the 
patriot and to the Christian, as involving both 
our civil and religious rights and privileges ; both 
of whom should remember, that by watchfulness 
and vigor we may now maintain what in future 
our tears and blood may not avail us to recover. 
The day may come, and it may not be far dis- 
tant, and it may be too late, when this subject 
shall assume a weightier and all-absorbing inter- 
est with this nation ; when it shall be driven for 
self-protection to the adoption of measures for the 
exclusion of the aggressor from without, and for 
the subjugation of the foe within. Our contest is 
with a foreign potentate, and with his subjects in 
our midst, and with myriads on myriads ready 
to embark for our shores ; with hearts alien to us 
abroad as at home, in Protestant as in Papal 
countries, in America as in Italy or Spain. Our 
controversy is with a system, anti- American, anti- 
Republican, as well as anti-Protestant ; with prin- 
ciples carrying this character with them as es- 
sential to their identity, and invariably establish- 
ing that .character proportionably as they are 
restrained or unrestricted in their operation by 
extraneous influences. 

Anticipating the cry of intolerance! intolerance! 
from the truly tolerant partizans of that most 



INTRODUCTION. XI 

mtolerant Church, let this be our apology : As a 
Protestant and American citizen, I must present 
an inflexible and aggressive front to Popery, 
prompted by nature's first law and dictate, self- 
preservation, because it is exterminative of Pro- 
testantism and human rights. I am not intolerant 
in an evil sense, for I am an American citizen ; I 
am not intolerant, for I am a Protestant. I am 
struggling to secure the rights of conscience* 
liberty of speech, and the freedom of my country* 
I am but the enemy and opposer of the most cruel 
spirit of intolerance. If I am intolerant, (if you 
would have it so,) it is for toleration's sake; and 
neither the laws of God or man condemn me. 
As a Protestant, I blame Popery for having adul- 
terated and distorted Christianity, and buried her 
in a mass of errors. I believe it to be fundament- 
ally debased — & system of essential error. I hold 
it to be ruinous in its influence on the religious 
and eternal destinies of man ; and I am therefore 
bound to brand it as anti-Christian and flee all 
communion with it. As an American citizen I 
blame it, but not as a religion. I blame it as 
hazardous to the public safety and inconsistent 
with its present order and institutions; and for 
making religion the veil of its ambitious de- 
signs, the instrument of its power, and the throne 



Xll INTRODUCTION. 

of the worst political despotism the world ever 
saw. 

A glimpse into the future might startle, as- 
tonish, and confound us all. Could we realize 
with prophetic ken what may be the unhappy 
fate of our beloved country, or the destiny of the 
world — could we see the final issue of little sus- 
pected or latent causes now in operation — the 
scenes which some of this generation may live to 
behold, or those which posterity may witness, 
might fill us with indescribable horror and dis- 
may, and thrill our bosoms with agony. 

What shall be the issue in this contest, God 
only knows with certainty. In the absence of 
prescience, however, we are endowed with the 
inferior vision of wisdom and sagacity, which, 
with less certainty of future events, may, if duly 
employed, be adequate to the regulation of our 
conduct in adaption to all our interests, individual 
and associate ; with this advantage, that it checks 
our presumption, and leaves our conduct subject 
to the final destination of Him who rules over all. 
By the exercise of prudent circumspection, we 
may avoid many a surprise, and ordinarily escape 
those rocks against which the surges of time have 
dashed communities and individuals, through 
their own avoidable mismanagement and want of 



INTRODUCTION. Xlll 

prudent precaution. If ever their purposes are 
defeated, and their exertions diverted from the 
end they proposed, by the permission or interpo- 
sition of Divine Providence, mortals may rest 
assured their miscarriage is consistent with the 
ultimate success of right ; since a Justice too wise 
to err, too good to be unkind, is at the helm of 
the universe. Let not then a morbid and mis- 
placed charity or our national pride be ready to 
revolt at the abhorrent mention of our peril from 
Popery ; nor let us resign our chariot to Hercules, 
till we have put our own shoulder to the wheel. 
Divine Providence would have the hearty co-ope- 
ration of human providence ; and we are only au- 
thorized to expect the blessing of the former in 
the use of the latter. Heaven holds us respon- 
sible, in our private and public capacity, for the 
exercise of prudent circumspection in the ma- 
nagement of our affairs; which if we neglect, 
we may expect to incur the penalties of our folly. 
To the proper adjustment of our affairs we may 
be conducted, by attending to the established 
nature and tendencies of things, and by a process 
of reasoning and deduction from personal obser- 
vation and experience, and the recorded expe- 
rience of mankind. 

If, indeed, the elements of our country's disso- 



XIV INTRODUCTION. 

lutiori are at work, it is high time for the nation 
to be apprised of its danger, and to apply the 
remedies proper to arrest the disease threatening 
its destruction. Guided by the maxims of wis- 
dom and the lessons of experience, let us then 
turn our patient and anxious attention to the 
discovery of the causes, if indeed they exist, 
from the operation of which, if long unheeded 
and unresisted, the most horrible catastrophies 
are to be feared. It requires, we think, no extra- 
ordinary sagacity to detect elements in operation 
around us, which must, unchecked, effect such a 
revolution. Let us reconnoitre the enemy's 
forces and plans of attack, and afterwards deter- 
mine upon the countervailing movements neces- 
sary to his effectual resistance and defeat. 

If the imminency of our peril is not to be de- 
nied by any who have examined this subject, the 
means of our safety are perhaps equally clear. 
To be apprised of oar danger is half our pre- 
servation. The lurking foe will fear to bestir 
himself, and crouch in the recesses of his dark 
designs, whilst he knows the national eye to be 
riveted upon him ; and a nation of freemen, 
watchful of his movements, and almost forestall- 
ing the development of his purposes, will be 
ready at all times to adopt prompt measures of 



INTRODUCTION. XV 

resistance. Let every means be employed to 
enlighten the public mind upon this subject. Let 
the lecture-stand, the pulpit, and the press be 
appealed to as the engines of our generous but 
vigorous warfare. Let Protestant Associations be 
formed throughout the length and breadth of the 
land, to rebuke foreign associations, to stand as 
sentinels on the alert, and constitute a grand 
palladium thrown around our institutions and 
liberties. Clad in the invincible panoply of 
truth, let us go forward, and meet this system of 
error at every quarter. Let the principles of 
Popery stand unmasked and unadorned by it 
factitious trappings in their naked deformity and 
tendencies, — let history reflect its blaze of light 
upon its modus operandi; and let these, with 
every new development of facts, together furnish 
a clue to guide the whole people of this country 
to the dark recesses of the secret purposes and 
motives of the Papal Hierarchy. Should Popery 
succeed in this country, it will be for want of 
the universal diffusion of knowledge among 
the people. 

In this controversy the Christian minister 
occupies at once a responsible and delicate posi- 
tion. Nor should he be deterred from the at- 
tempt to diffuse light on this subject to the ut- 



XVI INTRODUCTION. 

most of his ability, through fear of being accused 
of springing out of his appropriate latitude, tar- 
nishing his ministerial character, or desecrating 
the holy sphere assigned him. This neglect 
cannot be regarded by us in any other light than 
as equivalent to the renunciation of an imperative 
and paramount duty. When religion and politics 
so intimately intermingle, it is alike the business 
of the ecclesiastic and the patriot to sustain their 
parts; and the Christian minister, in this case, 
should be the first champion of his country in 
the field. To the Church, in a pre-eminent 
sense, is confided the salvation of this nation. 
The Gospel of Christ, " the Spirit of his mouth," 
if it be saved at all, must be the principal in- 
strument in effecting its salvation, temporal as 
well as spiritual. With it is deposited the na- 
tural, and perhaps, most powerful antidote to 
Popery — that by which it is to be finally 
" destroyed." And in the present case, it is the 
Christian preacher's duty to reveal the Papal 
imposture — to throw off its religious garb — to 
hold it forth in its well- attested character of a 
usurpation, and disabuse mankind of its preten- 
sion to be in any true sense a Church or a re- 
ligion, both of which it has forfeited and would 
subvert. 



PERILS OF POPERY. 



CHAPTER I. 

INFALLIBILITY CONSIDERED. 

Though it does not belong to my plan to oc- 
cupy the wide field of discussion through which 
a particular examination of all the peculiar dog- 
mas of Popery would lead us, but rather to exhi- 
bit it in its more practical aspects, growing out of 
its essential genius and history, (embracing its 
modern manoeuvers to meet the present exigences, 
its general prospects, and natural antidote,) yet, 
as it might be expected in a work of this kind, I 
propose, referring my readers to the numerous 
and elaborate sources of information on these 
topics for further light, to dissipate the illusory 
basis of the whole system of Popish error, by a 
brief argument, which I would premise with a 
few general observations. 

By the designation, Popery, I understand that 
great apostacy from primitive Christianity, and 
corruption of Catholicism, which acknowledges 
the Roman Pontiff (either alone or conjointly 
with a General Council,) infallible head of the 
Church, or head of an infallible Church. 



18 PERILS OF POPERY. 

At first the title of Pope, which in fact signi- 
fies the name of father, from papa, was enjoyed 
by all bishops, and sometimes even by the inferi- 
or clergy. Afterwards it was equally bestowed 
on the Bishop of Rome and those who possessed 
the other considerable sees. Cyprian had been 
complimented with the title of Pope of Carthage, 
by Cornelius, Bishop of Rome. About the se- 
venth century, the prelates of the Roman See 
began, however, to appropriate this title to them- 
selves. Soon afterwards, so insatiable are the 
demands of ambition and vanity, they connected 
with that title a claim to new privileges and pow- 
ers. Agatho was the first who laid claim to the 
attribute of infallibility for the Church at Rome, 
in virtue of the assumed primacy of Peter. 
Neither the claim to infallibility, nor the Pope's 
headship, though ultimately successful, was at 
once admitted. Many bishops and princes resist- 
ed it; and the Spanish monarchs, particularly, 
chose not to consider the Roman Pontiff even 
as head of the Church, but claimed nearly the 
same degree of supremacy over the churches 
in their dominions, which the kings of England, 
since the reign of Henry the Eighth, have exer- 
cised over theirs. 



PERILS OF POPERY. 19 

The erection of the Papacy was indeed the 
work of time, and of the tedious encroachments 
of ages, and " Popery was only seen behind Catho- 
licism as a faint shadow." The simple primitive 
Church gradually gave way to a hierarchical self- 
styled Church. What was yielded as a privilege, 
began to be extorted as a right. Bishops claimed 
a superiority over their yielding equals ; and the 
Roman bishops shared in the influence and hon- 
ors of the ancient metropolis of the world — a 
privilege they neither disrelished to enjoy, nor 
failed to improve. The ambition of the Church 
trod in the steps of her success, her errors of 
her ambition; but not before the Papacy and 
Hierarchy arose in her midst, lording it over 
God's heritage, did she properly merit the ap- 
pellation of Popery. Thenceforward her claim 
to be considered either as Christian or Catholic 
ceased; intoxicated with pride she plunged deep- 
er and deeper into corruption, ever ripening into 
maturity : her religion became a name and a form, 
and her pretensions a snare. Popery is therefore 
not Catholicism : it is Hierarchism, — " the religion 
of the priest, devised by the priest, for the glory 
of the priest, and in which a priestly caste is 
dominant." 

If we would examine a building as to its 



20 PERILS OF POPERY. 

solidity, we naturally begin at its foundation, pro- 
ceeding upwards if we find it right ; but if wrong, 
the examination is at an end. A house founded 
upon the sand, however imposing or beautiful its 
appearance, is of no value ; because it cannot be 
occupied with any degree of safety. We should 
proceed upon exactly the same plan in the investi- 
gation of systems purporting to be of truth. In 
the Church of Rome, her assumed infallibility is, 
indeed, the base principle. Take this away, 
and the temple falls into ruins — the arch, deprived 
of its key-stone, dissolves of itself, and the magic 
spell is gone, that binds her votaries to all her 
other errors. It is in virtue of this divine attri- 
bute that she asserts her right to oblige all Chris- 
tians to receive the books of Scripture adjudged 
canonical by her, and to reject all others — to in- 
vest the Word of God with authority, to fix its 
sense, to add prerequisites to salvation to those 
contained in Scripture at her pleasure — and to de- 
cide all controversies respecting matters of faith. 
In a word, as it is employed in this Church, it 
" stamps an entirely new character on the Chris- 
tian religion, substitutes a new object of faith 
and dependence, deifies what is human, hides and 
cancels what is divine, and transfers our allegiance 
from God to mortals." 



PERILS OF POPERY. 21 

It might be deemed a sufficient refutation of 
this doctrine, merely to advert to the fact, that in 
its obvious absurdity and alarming issues, it car- 
ries with it its own condemnation, — that its very 
proposal is an insult offered to the common sense 
of the reasoning part of mankind. But since it 
assumes an importance quite beyond its own, 
from its constituting the only distinguishing 
principle of the Papist, (we use the term in no 
uncourteous sense,) the great inlet and conserva- 
tor of all the egregious errors and scandalous prac- 
tices of the Papal Chufch, — since, like the fatal 
fabled box of Pandora, out of it have issued all 
the ills which distinguish its history, it may 
merit in this place a more distended though tran- 
sient notice. 

Since the argument urged in its favor by its 
advocates, from reason and Scripture, involves an 
appeal to private judgment, it therefore neutralizes 
itself. The assumption that, independent of an 
infallible guide, we can not come to any conclu- 
sion in respect to points of faith on which the 
conscience can safely rely, precludes the possibili- 
ty of our ever ascertaining with certainty , even 
supposing it to be abstractly true, the existence of 
such a tribunal. It is a question that can only be 
decided by Scripture testimony; and since nothing 



22 PERILS OF POPERY. 

short of infallibility is authorized to interpret z7, 
it must ever be impossible for any fallible being to 
arrive at a safe conclusion as to the existence and 
seat of this high attribute ; unless we gratuitously 
assume the whole in favor of the Church of Rome, 
and afterwards receive her infallible sanction of 
our implicit faith and piety, based upon our bare 
groundless assumption : in which case, the de- 
cision terminates where it commenced — in mere 
fallibility. But how immense the disproportion 
between the foundation, and the majestic fabric it 
is to sustain ! What a glaring absurdity ! And 
yet, on no other principle can the question be 
ceded in favor of Rome. Thus, by a most fla- 
grant inconsistency, the argument for infallibility 
betrays itself. 

There is but one way to obviate this difficulty. 
It may be said that reason is competent to decide 
on this point, but that its competency terminates, 
— it is discharged from office, — when this is 
settled. That is to say, when the most impor- 
tant^ and indeed the most obscure point of faith 
is determined by private judgment, we need a 
higher court to adjudicate the minor difficulties! 
The argument, like an inverted pyramid, cannot 
stand. 

It is the 'most important point of faith, as we 



PERILS OP POPERY. 23 

have observed, in the whole compass of the 
Popish system. To abandon all our religious and 
eternal interests, the supreme faculty of conscience, 
and glorious attribute of reason with which Hea- 
ven has endowed us, to the mercy and guidance 
of a hierarchy, either human or angelic, is a 
weighty concern — one that certainly demands, at 
all events, great caution, and overwhelming evi- 
dence : and it may be soberly questioned whether 
irresistible conviction might be deemed a sufficient 
motive to compliance, without possessing the 
Roman boast to receive it. 

But this doctrine of infallibility, supposing it to 
be true, is at least among the most obscure of the 
doctrines contained in the Bible. The argument 
collected from it and reason is merely presump- 
tive, when it ought to be positive. The proof is 
from passages of doubtful import, when it ought 
to be absolute; inferential, when it should be 
direct; and equivocal, where it should be de- 
cisive. It begs the question it ought to settle. 

The investigation resolves itself into two ques- 
tions : — 

I. Is there in existence an infallible community 
styling itself the Church? And, 

II. What community so styling itself is en- 
titled to this pretension ? 



24 PERILS OP POPERY. 

The Scriptures are to decide on both these 
questions ; or if an appeal to the principles of 
reason be admitted, "the possession of infallibility 
by an individual, or by a number of individuals, 
is a matter of fact, whose truth must be evinced 
in the same manner as other facts." Since, then, 
the general question is insusceptible of the latter 
kind of evidence, the pretensions to infallibility 
assumed by the Church of Rome, solely rest on 
scripture testimony. And how lucid the class of 
texts produced for that purpose ! Such, for in- 
stance, as the promise of Christ to be always with 
his Apostles, and the promise of the Spirit to lead 
them into all truth ! And then, to vindicate the 
claims of the Church of Rome — the assumed 
primacy of Peter — the saying of Christ to him, 
" Upon this rock," referring more obviously to a 
weighty sentiment just uttered by the Apostle, than 
to himself, — u Upon this rock will I build my 
church," and the exclusive assignment of "the keys 
of the kingdom of Heaven" to him, are adduced. 
Much of this language, it will be perceived, is 
highly figurative and metaphorical ; and the con- 
nection of the whole with the pretensions of the 
Church of Rome, if there is any, extremely indis- 
tinct ; it is palpably such that an unbiased reader 
of the New Testament, ignorant of her preten- 



PERILS OF POPERY. 25 

sions. could never stumble upon her claims, or 
conclude that they even taught the existence of 
any such living oracle. There is so much room 
for variation in the interpretation of the passages 
on which the Papists lay such great stress, that it 
would not perhaps be easy to find two commenta- 
tors in any community whose expositions perfectly 
coincide. But were it admitted that these passages 
are properly interpreted and paraphrased by the 
Popish divines, it still remains to be proved, that 
the Roman Church is that Church, in preference 
to the Greek, the Armenian, or the Nestorian. In 
order to this, historical evidence — unequivocal his- 
torical evidence — of two facts, is essential. First. 
That Peter exercised his episcopal office at Rome. 
And, secondly, that he devolved his pecu- 
liar power and prerogatives on his successors in 
that sacred office. He might have been at Rome, 
and not have exercised those functions there, or he 
might have done so, and yet not have devolved 
his powers on his successors — he might have trans- 
mitted them to some other see. 

Here a necessity is created for the assumption 
of numerous facts to sustain the pretensions of the 
Church of Rome. "That Peter was ever at 
Rome, we have no evidence but vague and un- 
certain tradition ; that he exercised the episcopal 



26 PERILS OF POPERY. 

functions there, is still more uncertain, or rather 
extremely improbable, as it is neither insinuated 
in Scripture nor very consistent with his higher 
character and functions. But supposing both 
these points were conceded, what evidence have 
we of that devolution of his power and preroga- 
tives on his successors, on which the authority 
assumed by the Bishop of Rome entirely rests? 
From the language of Scripture and the testimony 
of antiquity, there is much more reason for affirm- 
ing that James the Less was Bishop of the Church 
at Jerusalem, than that Peter sustained that office 
at Rome ; and by a parity of reason, his sucessors 
must be supposed to have inherited his powers 
and his infallibility; and the rather, since the 
Church at Jerusalem was the mother of all other 
churches, planted, not by one, but by all the 
Apostles, and often dignified by their united 
presence, — a Church on which the redundance of 
spiritual gifts was first poured, and consecrated by 
the blood of the first martyr. If, in opposition to 
this, we are reminded that the succeeding bishops 
of Jerusalem derived from St. James the rights 
attached to the episcopal function, but not his 
personal prerogatives and immunities as an Apos- 
tle, — this very distinction applies precisely to the* 
successors of St. Peter." 



PERILS OF POPERY. 27 

Such is the doctrine, and such its proofs and 
difficulties, that alone is submitted to the popular 
apprehension for judgment. We must admit 
that, (supposing it to be true,) it, at least, and 
above all others, not excepting even transubstan- 
tiation, (supposing it also to be a doctrine of the 
Bible,) requires an infallible decision to sustain it 
— a new revelation to bring it to light. Will it 
be contended that the other points of faith essen- 
tial to salvation, exceed this in obscurity? that 
any other requires for its solution a more profound 
acquaintance with history and antiquity, com- 
bined with a more critical acquaintance with 
Scripture, and the means of its just interpretation? 
Will it be contended that any are equally obscure, 
or so justly merit the signet of infallibility ? 
But we tarry not here. The shades thicken as 
we advance: and at every step the difficulties 
if possible, grow more insuperable to the most 
distant hope of ever arriving at a divine faith. 

The disagreement of the Romish divines as to 
the seat of this fond assumption, affords proof, not 
only of its absurdity, since it precludes the possi- 
bility of ever deriving the advantages from the 
doctrine plead as the reasonable ground of its be- 
lief; but also of the point we are establishing — its 
extreme obscurity. By one, the mere bull of the 



28 PERILS OP POPERY. 

Pope is deemed sufficient to decide his faith ; by 
another, the decree of a council ; by a third, their 
united authority is required ; and by the fourth, 
the decision of the universal church is demanded. 
Now, how, in such circumstances, is a divine faith 
to be attained to ? If, for instance, a pontiff's bull 
and the decree of a council be at issue, (a case 
which has more than once occurred,) neither, ac- 
cording to these divines, is of universal obligation ; 
and the infallible authority, wherever it be sup- 
posed resident, has not decided: each will have 
its party, and what is deemed obligatory by one, 
will be rejected or questioned by the other. But 
if both concur in a decision, though there is a 
large majority perhaps who will submit to their 
decree, yet the fourth class, who hold infallibility 
to be seated in the church universal or diffusive, 
are likely to question its force. We might add, 
that with the latter, the pretension is virtually 
given up, since it can never be exerciesd, suppos- 
ing it to have an abstract existence ; for when has 
the whole church met to make decrees, to choose 
representatives, or to deliver their sentiments 
touching any question started ; and less than all, 
could not constitute the church universal, and so 
could not claim the prerogatives of infallibility ? 
Hence, on this hypothesis, it may be deemed for 



PERILS OP POPERY. 29 

ever impracticable, as it has been through the past 
ages unexercised. Besides, how are the unlearned, 
who constitute the great mass, to decide between 
these interfering claims — to determine what is in- 
fallible truth ? If he be sent to the divines, since 
every one in his judgment is but a fallible man, 
the ignus fatuus still eludes his grasp. 

Again, since it comes within the province of 
reason to determine upon the existence of an in- 
fallible human tribunal on earth, and where it is 
to be found, every true Papist is supposed, not 
only to have ascertained the certain existence and 
seat of infallibility, but also to be so familiar with 
the annals of his church as to be incapable of 
having imposed upon him for infallible, merely 
human decisions, which is preposterous. But 
neither is its seat settled, nor, if it were, the 
data within the reach of the vast multitude 
upon which they can form an accurate judg- 
ment. 

Then history itself is not an infallible vehicle ; 
hence even those whose heads are filled with 
learned lore are left in jeopardy — a truth of which 
we have prima facie evidence in their conflicting 
opinions. To reap the advantages of this doc- 
trine, its recipient, no less than the tribunal it 
erects, should be insusceptible to error; and to 
c 



30 PERILS OF POPERY. 

sustain it, objective and subjective infallibility are 
confounded. 

But supposing all these insuperable difficulties 
removed, there arises still another no less formi- 
dable. When hard pressed with the consequences 
resulting from the pretended infallibity of general 
councils, the modern advocates of the Popish 
system take refuge in the subtle and slippery dis- 
tinction which they allege exists between the doc- 
trines which are, and those which are not points 
of faith. It is on this principle they would main- 
tain consistency in their renunciation of the rights 
of the popes to interfere in temporal matters, the 
slavery of conscience, the violability of oaths taken 
to heretics, and the persecuting maxims of former 
ages. Now it cannot be denied that these princi- 
ples are not only couched in the decrees of coun- 
cils, but that they were never by any one disa- 
vowed ; that they were for ages acted upon as the 
infallible principles of the Church. Hence, by 
modern Papists, (at least in Protestant countries,) 
the Church is acknowledged to be at once fallible 
and infallible: one hemisphere of their minds 
who compose it illumed with celestial light ; the 
other, dark as midnight, or the infernal shades. 
Hence the necessity of ascertaining, on scriptural 
grounds, the true extent of this infallibility ; be- 



PERILS OF POPERY. 31 

cause the extent to which we are to subject our- 
selves to its arbitrary control, is a matter as much 
to be determined by Scripture, as the obligation 
in any sort or degree to acknowledge its authority 
and bow to its decisions. So that the doctrine of 
infallibility, even could we cede its abstract truth, 
rests on the obscurest passages of Scripture, which 
in no way distinguish the Church in which it is 
to be found, in what portion of that community so 
styling itself it resides, or to what extent its 
authority is to be admitted. 

Is it reasonable, is it credible, does it come 
within the range of possibilities, I ask, that the 
most important, and yet most obscure of points 
of faith — the all-comprehending point — the pivot 
upon which turns the very possibility of our sal- 
vation — the mighty centre around which is to re- 
volve all our hopes — the basis of all subsequent 
acts of faith— that that upon which is suspended 
our everlasting destinies; — is it possible, I ask, 
that that great principle should be permitted, by 
the Great Head of the Church, to be submitted to 
our unbiassed judgments, while things of second- 
ary importance are scrupulously reserved for the 
decisions of that august tribunal, whose dread bar 
is erected on the decisions of our mere fallibility ? 
In other words, that the sun, the centre of the 



32 PERILS OF POPERY. 

mighty system of truth, by the reflection of whose 
refulgent beams all the secondaries shine and 
burn, is alone opaque and dark? A strange 
phenomenon this ! 

But is it possible ? No : the history of (he as- 
sumption is alone sufficient to expose the impos- 
ture. It is certain that in the first centuries of 
Christianity the claim to infallibility was not in 
any form preferred by the Church of Rome. 
When it was set up, it was in the form of a per- 
sonal appropriation by the Roman bishop, and for 
ages attributed to him by the Church in connexion 
with the Roman see ; and it was not till after the 
popes had grossly abused their arrogant preten- 
sion, till after the scandalous schism and conduct 
of rival popes had impaired the dignity of the 
office or the blind veneration it so long enjoyed, 
and the councils of Constance and Basil had 
challenged and exercised a supremacy over the 
bishops of Rome, that their pretensions to infalli- 
bility were called in question ; and the world at 
length discovered that for ages the Church had 
been mistaken as to the seat of her boasted in- 
fallibility. 

Are we still directed by the perplexed and 
astonished votary of this system, who professes to 
prostrate at once his reason and his faith before its 



PERILS OP POPERY. 33 

majesty, to the Church for its solution? Would 
he still send us to this living oracle — this abomi- 
nation of desolation sitting in the temple of God? . 
Shall we, we inquire in return, ask the impostor 
to reveal himself, the robber to confess his dis- 
honesty, or the murderer his guilt ? Nay but, we 
continue, if we are sufficiently infallible to decide 
for ourselves the weightier matters of the law, 
we are not too fallible to adjudicate for ourselves 
the lighter ones. So trusting to the Bible and 
common sense, with the Divine blessing upon 
them, we leave you to take care of the infalli- 
bility of the Church, while ice try to secure our 
souls, our money, and our liberties. 

This lofty pretension was the fruit of a pride 
marked with the highest character of impiety. It 
naturally fostered and enhanced an ambition of 
which it was the offspring, and produced besides 
a high-toned persecuting intolerance and ensan- 
guined cruelty. Not merely were these the prac- 
tical manifestations of the pride of the Church 
under the benign auspices of this infallibility; but 
they were solemnly sanctioned and recorded as 
its established principles : nor have they to this 
hour been disowned by this authority. Nor need 
we wonder, that, having aspired to usurp this 
celestial attribute, and to dissolve his creatures 



34 PERILS OF POPERY 

from their allegiance to the Most High, by effect- 
ing the disruption of their faith from His word to 
itself, it should next aspire to supremacy among 
the powers that are ordained of God, lay its hand 
upon the thrones of princes, and add to its bold 
impiety towards God a proportionate injustice 
and cruelty to man. 

From this absurd, preposterous, and arrogant 
pretension might be anticipated two consequences 
equally fatal to religion and to society, supposing 
it to be as successful as the assumption is bold 
and impious. These conseqences are, — the awful 
corruption of religion, if not the renunciation of 
all its distinguishing principles ; the superinduc- 
tion upon it of a system of delusion calculated to 
subserve the evil passions, whence the lofty pre- 
tension originated: and, secondly, a total in- 
susceptibility, an inherent and eternal hostility to 
melioration or improvement. And these propo- 
sitions we now proceed more fully to evince 
and apply. 



35 



CHAPTER II. 

POPERY SUBVERSIVE OF RELIGION AND SOCIAL ORDER. 

Adapted to subserve the purposes of avarice 
and ambition, Popery is manifestly the invention 
of spiritual wickedness in high places ; and con- 
sequently subversive of religion, disastrous in all 
its tendencies, and malignant in all its aspects 
upon society, as it has been ruinous throughout 
the whole sphere of time in exact proportion to 
the absoluteness of its control. 

Were any piece of mechanism submitted to 
our examination in order that we might ascertain 
its purpose, we would naturally compare the 
mutual relations of the parts, and the adaptation 
of the whole machinery to the proper end. This 
might be a difficult task if we were without the 
data requisite to ordinary minds to arrive at that 
end, though possible to minds of a more analytic 
and yet comprehensive order; if, for instance, 
one had never seen a similar contrivance, or 
never by observation or instruction had formed 
an idea of its operation by a comparison with 



36 PERILS OF POPERY. 

which he may readily arrive at the discovery of 
the purpose it is fitted to answer. But it would 
be a material assistance in ascertaining the mo- 
dus operandi of such a system ; it would greatly 
relieve, if not entirely remove the difficulty, even 
to a dull man, of analyzing the mutual relations of 
the several parts, and the relation of the whole 
to the end to which it is adapted, not only to see 
the machinery in motion, but from the experience 
of ages to have evidence that their unimpeded 
motions and its unimpaired operation hold the ne- 
cessary relation to each other of cause and effect. 

In illustration of this point let us employ an 
ancient town clock. The oldest inhabitants of 
the town or village testify to its cffice from their 
earliest recollection ; their fathers testified it to 
them. The curious visitor unfamiliar with such 
mechanism, on examining the machinery as we 
have supposed, and finding its perfect adaptation 
to the end which he has been informed it has 
from time immemorial subserved, would not for 
an instant doubt the nature and use of the system 
of machinery. Or would an intelligent inquirer ? 
because it had been permitted to run down, was 
impaired by time, or prevented by the rust per- 
mitted to form, or the dust to accumulate upon 
its works, from keeping as good time as the sys~ 



PERILS OP POPERY. 37 

tern is evidently adapted to attain under more 
favorable circumstances, and as it formerly did, 
deny its adaptation to that end, or be imposed 
upon by any one to believe, that its relation is 
and has always been to some other end, which it 
has never answered, and to which, judging from 
the result of its examination, it has as little relation 
as the Popish system is calculated to subserve 
the purposes of true religion? 

The genius of Popery ascertains its tendencies, 
its history, its actual results ; and both will illus- 
trate what we might anticipate, and would realize 
from its future free operation. 

From its history and genius Popery is chiefly 
to be distinguished as a usurpation. This is its 
inalienable, essential, identifying, and all-com- 
prising feature from the beginning. Power and 
opulence were the objects of its ambition, and of 
its steady pursuit. 

The spirit of the system, a spirit of usurpation 
and encroachment, assumed and formed that 
organization through which it operated, instead 
of the system moulding it; and gradually assi- 
milated the whole Catholic world to itself, and to 
its gloomy purposes. This became the great 
regulator ; the Pope became the great centre of a 
Catholicism and a unity, not in doctrine or in 



38 PERILS OF POPERY. 

Christian experience, but in encroachr 0611 *? an " 
the whole Church conspired to establish her own 
greatness by confirming and augme xltm & tile 
authority of her acknowledged head. < * ° exa " 
the Church was to aggrandize religion, t0 ensure 
to the spirit the victory over the flesh, a n( * to Go( * 
the conquest of the world. Such were lts 
maxims" from the time of Hildebrtf 11 "! m 
these, ambition found its advantage, anci lana ~ 
ticism its excuse." They are doubtle, 3S stl11 lts 
maxims, since the whole hierarchy ha s common 
cause with the Pontiff. When Papal P**** was 
empress of the world, they were it? P rmces > 
nobles, and rulers in connection with ^ lm ' and 
the instruments of his power. He r bishops, 
cardinals and legates, dared to insulf and me ~ 
nace monarchs with impunity, and t° tram P le 
legitimate authority beneath their feet; Subor- 
dination to the Pontificial authority is? has ever 
been, the paramount principle of pPP el T lts 
bulwark — its constitution, on which are sus ~ 
pended all other laws and regulations, things ^ to 
be abrogated and modified to corresjf onci Wlt " 
the color of the Pontiff's whim, or suit the ever " 
veering rule of expediency. All m ust Y ieici 
to the exaltation of the Papacy; at its slirine 
every sentiment of truth and piety was sacri hced, 



PERILS OF POPERY. 39 

and religion and Christianity immolated to its 
gloomy and ambitious genius. 

The rights of Heaven and of earth were usurped 
to exalt this aspiring hierarch. It was not meet that 
the Vicar of Christ, designated God by a Roman 
emperor ; invested by writers and commentators 
of the Church with a universal dominion, not 
content with this world, which bounds the am- 
bition of earth's mightiest heroes, but reaching 
into the invisible ; not only invested by them 
with Divine attributes and honors, but exalted 
above Deity in some respects ; subjecting to his 
control the eternal and immutable distinctions 
of right and wrong, virtue and vice, and thus 
dissolving his creatures from their allegiance to 
the Most High ; it was not meet, I say, that he 
should be subject to any temporal jurisdiction: 
he should rather be considered jaredivino, secular 
ruler of the universe. And it was natural to 
transfer the allegiance of the inferior orders of the 
clergy, who enjoyed a handsome participation in 
the Pope's plenitude of power, whose stupendous 
function it was to make God their Creator, and 
who constituted the body, the Church, of which 
his Holiness was the head, and ambition and the 
lust of dominion the divinity within, animating 
and actuating all its members, from princes to 



40 PERILS OF POPERY. 

the Pope, and thus bind them to the pontifical 
throne. These principles to which the Papacy 
itself gave rise, were carried out in all their bear- 
ings. History reflects its light upon them in 
letters of inextinguishable infamy. Accordingly, 
kings and potentates were degraded into sub- 
jection ; were treated as vassals ; were held 
amenable to the pontificial authority, their laws 
interdicted and repealed, and their decrees coun- 
termanded: they were ^approved, condemned, re- 
buked, or anathematized, according to the will 
and humor of his Holiness ; were dethroned, and 
the allegiance of their subjects absolved ; and the 
rights of nations, of the Church, and the univer- 
sal rights of man, were trampled upon by this 
insolent usurper. 

A more particular survey of the rise and pro- 
gress of the Papacy will be important to the 
further elucidation of the subject. 

During the first three centuries, Christianity 
remained comparatively pure and unadulterated ; 
though even in the apostolic age the mystery of 
iniquity had begun to work, and the spirit of 
encroachment and compromise was stealthily ad- 
vancing. In the fourth, by the conversion of 
the Emperor Constantine, and his becoming head 
of the Church, and advancing it in wealth and 



PERILS OF POPERY. 41 

influence, a state of things was brought about 
favorable to the development of that downward 
tendency. And early in the seventh, when by 
the grant of Phocas, the Roman patriarch was 
constituted universal bishop, the pontificiate was 
permanently established, which prepared the way 
for all that tragic history of the Church which 
follows. Amid the universal wreck of virtue and 
excellence in Europe — amidst the irruption and 
settlement of the Saracens in the South, the 
fierce and bloody conflicts of barbarous ari$ 
pagan nations in the North, the universal cor- 
ruption of religion and decay of learning, the 
Papal power attained in the eighth century to 
an unexpected height; and that alliance was 
formed between superstition and despotism, 
which for many succeeding ages proved the 
scourge of mankind. In this century the nomi- 
nal authority of the enfeebled imperial power 
was shaken off ; the Eastern and Western divi- 
sions of the empire dissolved their connection ; 
the infamous Pepin expiated his perfidy to his 
master by liberal donations to the Church, and 
repaid the assistance and proved his gratitude to 
the Pontiff for his crown, by raising him to the 
dignity of a secular prince. The alliance be- 
tween the king of the Franks and the Roman 



42 PERILS OF POPERY. 

Pontiff was confirmed by mutual necessities, 
and strengthened by mutual obligations. Char- 
lemagne, Pepin's son and successor, a man of 
surprising genius, as he was of unbounded 
ambition, threw the iEgis of his protection over 
the Roman see ; and for his additional donations 
of several cities and provinces to the Pope, under 
the specious pretext of atoning for his sins by his 
munificence to the Church, but in fact rather 
prompted by policy than piety, he had conferred 
upon him by the latter, as the reward of his 
patronage and pious obedience to the Church, 
and amid the acclamations of the Roman people, 
the title of Emperor, to which he had ardently 
aspired. Thus, by two usurpations, and the 
mutual support of the usurpers, was the Papacy 
invested with a temporal dominion. Pepin 
usurped the Frankish throne, by the consent and 
confirmation of the pontiffs, Zachary and Stephen, 
who thereby usurpatively assumed the character 
of supreme arbiters of the nations, deposers and 
creators of kings and emperors. The enormous 
powers acquired over the successors of the bar- 
barian conquerors of the Western provinces by 
the Roman Pontiff, rendered it impolitic for the 
usurper to transact so important an affair without 
his concurrence: and Pepin and his successor 



PERILS OF POPERY. 43 

secured a temporal principality to the successors 
of the poor and humble Peter, and strengthened 
the power of the Church, in hopes of retaining 
their usurped dominion through the means which 
had acquired it. The example of Zachary and 
Stephen was imitated by John XII., as unhappy 
in his fate, as scandalous in his promotion, who 
transferred the government of Rome from the 
King of Italy to the German monarch, and for 
his service in ridding the Roman Church and 
people of the oppressive yoke of Berenger II., 
proclaimed Otho, Emperor of the Romans. The 
Germanic emperors, actuated by a similar motive 
to the Frankish monarchs, yet maintaining the 
prerogatives of suzerein lords, strengthened the 
Papacy, but at the peril of their own authority, 
till the reptile their bosoms warmed, inflicted 
a deadly wound upon themselves. 

But it was reserved for the original and power- 
ful genius of Hildebrand, after reigning in several 
preceding Popes, to conceive and execute the 
bold and magnificent design of erecting a politico- 
ecclesiastical despotism upon the ruins of legi- 
timate government in the Papal world. Aided 
by a conjuncture of circumstances peculiarly 
favorable to his ambitious project ; the Germanic 
Empire weakened by intestine broils; a young 



44 PERILS OP POPERY. 

and dissipated monarch on the throne of France ; 
a great part of Spain under the dominion of the 
Moors; the kingdoms of the North but newly 
converted ; Italy broken into a number of petty 
principalities ; and England recently conquered 
by the Romans, he proceeded to subject priests, 
princes and people to his unbounded control. By 
dissolving their connection with the kings and 
emperors and imposing upon them a universal 
celibacy, he rendered the priesthood subject to 
the despotic government and the arbitrary power 
of the Pontiff alone; changed the entire hierarchy 
into a monkish order ; made bishops and abbots 
as well as inferior clergy the myrmidons of his 
power; arid bound the universal Church in 
chains. Thence he proceeded to extend his 
jurisdiction to emperors, kings, and princes. 
France, Saxony, Spain, and England, he claimed 
as tributaries or fiefs of the Apostolic See, de- 
manding their tribute with an arrogance only 
equalled by its unblushing effrontery, and pro- 
posed to the King or Emperor of the Romans an 
oath of allegiance as the profession of his sub- 
jection to the pontificial throne. The crusades, 
and a concurrence of circumstances, in after ages 
confirmed his authority, and extended his prero- 
gatives and dominions. Every favorable junc- 



PERILS OF POPERY. 45 

ture was seized with avidity as it was sought 
with vigilance by the aspiring pontiffs ; but here 
we behold that comprehensive system of spiritual 
despotism achieved, which formed the basis of 
all the future history of Popery up to the Reform- 
ation. Then and thenceforward, a voice from 
the Vatican struck terror to the hearts of men, 
and shook the pillars of once mighty thrones. 
He who resisted a bull of the Pope, was subjected 
to the perils of excommunication, which not 
only rendered the autfionty of the mightiest 
monarchs exceedingly precarious, but in fact, 
jeoparded their persons; for it was generally 
accompanied or followed by the absolution of 
their subjects from their allegiance, and subjected 
the proscribed prince or monarch to the perils of 
a world enslaved and inspired by a dangerous 
and cruel superstition. Kingdoms and empires 
were created, and potentates deposed or exalted, 
at his imperious will ; they received their crowns 
at his hands, or yielded them up at his pleasure. 
If they had the temerity to withstand his man- 
date, they were often seen at last trembling and 
prostrate at his feet; princes on foot led his 
palfrey by the reins, in token of their homage ; 
what arms had failed to accomplish, superstition 
did ; mighty nations who were invincible to the 

D 



46 PERILS OF POPERY. 

arms and the policy of the mightiest generals 
of pagan Rome, brought their tribute, and others 
threw themselves into the embrace of the 
" crowned priest," and all the world cowered be- 
fore him, and stood in terror of his voice, as all 
the beasts of the earth when the lion roareth. 

The usurpations of Popery, primarily promoted 
by a spirit of compromise and imposture, were 
afterwards advanced and sustained by every spe- 
cies of corruption, intolerance, cruelty, and oppres- 
sion: while these wsre the fruit and offspring 
of usurpation, they also exerted a reflex influence 
on their common origin. Popery accommodated 
itself to every thing — to every condition of society 
and every principle of human nature — that was 
calculated to enhance its popularity, promote its as- 
cendency, and strengthen its usurpations. What 
a medley of contradictions, what a multitude of 
inconsistencies does it exhibit ! What vice, what 
crimes, has it not directly or indirectly sanctioned ! 
What error, that could minister to its greatness, 
has it not admitted and taught! Well has it 
been characterized as the deepest conception, and 
mightiest achievement of Satan — an ample net 
for catching men — a delusion and bondage made 
for the world — a stupendous deception and uni- 
versal counterfeit of truth, which hath a chamber 



PERILS OF POPERY. 47 

for every natural faculty of the soul, and an occu- 
pation for every energy of the natural spirit. 

This was the necessary result of its genius. It 
compromised all that was distinctive and glorious 
in Christianity away, because it answered not the 
ends of its ambition, and as little suited its dispo- 
sition and perverted taste. It was, therefore, a 
barter for power and influence, for worldly wealth 
and grandeur. The perfect equality of believers 
teachers and people, in the sight of God, which 
was the scriptural and primitive order, was not 
calculated to promote the priesthood — to make 
them lords over God's heritage — to awe the people 
into profound reverence and submission to their 
spiritual guides — to deliver them over bound and 
gagged by superstition into their hands : and the 
simple doctrine of salvation by grace or justifica- 
tion by faith, was not likely to fill and replenish 
the overflowing coffers of the Church. With 
these, as they were the two grand governing prin- 
ciples of Christianity, the one to rule her polity, 
and the other her doctrine, were swept away the 
main fortresses of the Church, and she laid open 
to the inroad of every base error, and to the intru- 
sion of every idolatrous and impure rite. Neither 
could minister to the intoxicated ambition of a 
princely pontiff thirsting after fresh orgies. The 



48 PERILS OF POPERY. 

power of the priestly caste, and the reign of super- 
stition and ignorance, were essential to the success 
of the aspirant. The former must sustain his 
throne, and the latter form its palladium. Hence 
it was his true policy to add to the meretricious 
magnificence of the Church by every fruitful ex- 
pedient — to incorporate into Christian worship a 
base compound of Jewish and Pagan rites and 
ceremonies, which had been insensibly stealing 
upon the Church from the beginning, with the 
rising hierarchy in its midst — to put these and 
the priesthood in the foreground — to strike the 
senses of the multitude, and awe and confound 
them into superstition and subjection — to turn 
their attention to the priest, armed with his awful 
and new-invented functions for salvation — to adopt 
new tenets apologetical of these rites — to erect 
his own pretensions in proportion to the ascent of 
their importance — to keep Christianity and her 
Bible in the back ground, — and yet to hang out 
the sign of Holy Roman Catholic Church ! 
Better had she inscribed it with the apocalyptic 
amendment, Ci Mystery, Babylon !" 

Her imposition in the name of Christianity was 
no less subsidiary to her usurpations than her 
compromises. She must make the people believe 
that the adopter of the mitre and vestments of the 



PERILS OF POPERY. 49 

priest of Cybele, was the divinely constituted 
Vicar of Christ, and the sustainer of the tiara, the 
legitimate successor of the humble fisherman 
Apostle. She must insist upon being, and seek 
to palm herself upon the world for, old Calholo- 
cism or Christianity. Both anti-Catholic and anti- 
Christian, she yet insists, with an unblushing 
effrontery, upon these claims, and urges them 
with a hardened and practiced facility. Arrayed 
in the pomps and vanities of paganism and the 
world — combined with some constitutions of Juda- 
ism, and tinctured with pagan philosophy — she 
professes to be old Christianity, as primitive as 
the Apostles. With her Papacy, indebted in no 
small degree to the infamous Decretals, for many 
"ages the arsenal of Rome,"* for its exaltation, 
she still persists in her claims to be ancient 



* In this collection of alleged decrees of the Popes, the most 
ancient bishops, contemporaries, Tacitus and Quintilian, were 
made to speak the barbarous Latin of the ninth century. The 
customs and constitutions of the Franks were gravely attributed to 
the Romans in the time of the Emperors. Popes quoted the 
Bible in the Latin translation of St. Jerome, who lived one, two, 
or three centuries after them. And Victor, Bishop of Rome in 
the year 192, wrote to Theophilus, who was Archbishop of Alex- 
andria in 385. The impostor who had fabricated this collection, 
endeavored to prove that all bishops derived their authority from 



50 PERILS OF POPERY. 

Catholocism. Its priesthood, alien to the Chris- 
tian dispensation, arrogating the name and attri- 
butes of the Church, to the exclusion of the great 
community of believers, thus wresting from them 
their common rights, interposing a veil which 
Christ himself had rent, which was attested by 
the rending veil of the Jewish temple, and deny- 
ing the right of believers to access ivithin the veil 
to a free throne of grace ; they have persisted in 
maintaining to be of primitive and divine institu- 
tion. Pretended successors of the humble Peter, 
her haughty pontiffs have been arrayed in the 
vestments, and loaded with the honors of royalty. 
The disciples of the meek and lowly Jesus, who 
has said, " My kingdom is not of this world," she 
is intolerant, ambitious, and covered with the 
blood of his saints. Accommodated to meet 
every variety, condition, and circumstance of hu- 
man nature, but in its regenerate state, she would 
palm herself on the world for the only true Church 

the Bishop of Rome, who held his own immediately from Christ. 
He not only recorded all the successive acquisitions of the Pon- 
tiffs, but carried them back to the earliest times. The Popes did 
not blush to avail themselves of this contemptible imposture. As 
early as 865, Nicholas I. selected weapons from this repository to 
attack princes and bishops. — D'Aubine's History of the Reforma- 
tion. New-York ed. 1843, pp. 25, 26. 



PERILS OF POPERY. 51 

or religion. What hypocrisy was needed, what 
lying miracles, what a system of legerdemain ! 
To gain the ends of her ambition, it became 
necessary to renounce Christianity ; and yet they 
could not be secured but in her name. They 
forged it : her hand never subscribed it to a 
* Popish scroll ! 

Hence her prohibition of the people to read the 
Scriptures. She hates the light, and will not 
come to the light, lest her deeds should be re- 
proved. It is a course of policy dictated by its 
necessity to her very existence. This prohibition 
is evidence of her self-consciousnes of its condem- 
nation of her pretensions. She never would de- 
prive her subjects of the right or restrict their 
privilege to read the Scriptures could she hope 
any thing from the appeal, and did she not know 
that they would detect her enormities and unveil 
her impostures. Protestant Christianity, on the 
contrary, appeals to the Holy Scriptures, is wil- 
ling to rest its pretensions on their authority 
alone, and feels conscious of greatest security 
where they are best known. Confident that they 
vindicate and establish her claim to the great 
principles of primitive Christianity, she urges 
the people to read them ; and flings them forth 
without fear or hesitation, without note or com- 



52 PERILS OF POPERY. 

ment, or even living teacher, to be wielded by the 
Eternal Spirit. The Reformation of the sixteenth 
century was preceded and accompanied by the 
revival of letters. The two revivals, literary 
and religious, went hand in hand, like twin- 
sisters, mutually sustaining each other. The age 
of Renchlin and Erasmus was that of Luther 
and Melancthon ; the former, at the head of the 
literati, the latter, of the theologians. The trans- 
lation of the Scriptures, and their mighty circu- 
lation, was the soul and energy in the Reforma- 
tion. The same impression was produced in the 
minds of the learned who read them in the origi- 
nals, and of the illiterate, who read them in the 
vulgar tongues. As soon as they began to read 
them, they also began to conclude that, if the 
Bible be the Word of God, Popery must be the 
invention of man ; and at every step as they ad- 
vanced the conviction strengthened. 

Ignorance in her subjects was essential to the 
success of the impostor; and hence, it became 
necessary to deprive them by every artful expe- 
dient of the only Book which could reveal her to 
their view. To secure this end, the doctrine of 
infallibility was a grand and successful stroke of 
policy, since it drew general attention from the 
Bible to the priesthood, saved the people the 



PERILS OP POPERY. 53 

trouble of thinking for themselves, a privilege tor 
which they are often but too grateful; and in pro- 
portion to the advance of priestly power, the man- 
date of authority succeeded with the few who 
still preferred the right to think for themselves, 
to the privilege of being thought for by others. 
Since ignorance was essential to the progress and 
perpetuity of the errors of the Church, the more 
profound and universal the better for her; and 
hence that universal and universally prevalent 
ignorance and unquestioning submission which 
has ever overhung and pervaded Papal Christen- 
dom: — 

Silence how dead ! and darkness how profound ! 

A religious imposture, devised for the purposes 
of usurpation, could not fail to engender, or 
to be advanced by every species of corruption. 
Good fruit never grew on such an evil tree ; nor 
did a sweet stream ever flow from such a bitter 
and impure fountain. The deeper the priesthood 
steeped in crime, the better were they prepared to 
promote the sordid purposes of the hierarchy. 
Hence, the very head of the Catholic world was 
the very fountain of the licentiousness that over- 
spread it. ^Mi the clerical orders emulated the 



54 PERILS OF POPERY. 

Pontiff in immorality, and every species of vice. 
The nearer the throne the more impure the 
stream — for Rome herself was proverbially and 
notoriously a sink of iniquity; and where her 
superstitions were most firmly riveted, the public 
mind and mariners were most degraded. It was 
the main axiom of their policy that no falsehood, 
no perfidy, no injustice, no cruelties, that could 
secure and promote the interests of the Church, 
the hierarchy, were inadmissible — that the means 
sanctifies the end. Every institution of the 
Church became, in the hands of the priests, pro- 
motive of vice. 

The various errors to which Popery gave rise, 
or which she ripened into maturity, weakened or 
destroyed the awful and salutary sanctions of re- 
ligion, as they set at sale the privilege of perpe- 
trating ^the grossest crimes in consistency with 
exemption from future punishment: for even 
out of purgatory the priest could release the most 
scandalous sinners for money. For what crimes 
would not confession atone ? and the Pope could 
grant even indulgence to sin to the end of life. 
It is vain to attempt to parry this blow ; for what- 
ever face Jesuitical sophistry would put on these 
doctrines to justify them in the eyes of the en- 
lightened of our age, it is notorious that they 



PERILS OF POPERY. 55 

were taught the multitude, and held by them in 
their licentious forms ; and in the popular forms, 
they are most congenial with the genius and spirit 
of the system. Over all the moral relations and 
duties, his Holiness presumed to exercise un- 
bounded control — to enforce and confirm, or to 
annul them at his pleasure. What atrocity, what 
career of vice, even persevered in to the last, 
was inconsistent with salvation, when accompa- 
nied with subjection and liberality to the Church? 
And yet the most eminent virtue, and the most 
ardent piety, were incompatible with it, where 
that profound submission was withheld, or that 
unbounded authority questioned. 

These errors which corrupted the people, en- 
riched the hierarchy, and they advanced its pow- 
er by the popular reverence and fear they extorted 
in its favor. The very immorality of the people 
prepared them to be the dupes of the priests by 
the ignorance and superstition it created; and 
the more debased the priesthood, the better were 
they fitted to take advantage with impunity from 
conscience of the popular degradation. Thus 
the ministers of Rome became the ministers of 
crime ; and the Papal world worshipped at the 
altars of the Church, dedicated to vice in the 
name of Christianity, like the modern atheists, 



56 PERILS OP POPERY. 

who did homage to impiety in the name of rea- 
son. So nearly are the systems related in their 
results. The minds of the more discerning vi- 
brated between infidelity and superstition. The 
former made them uneasy of the restraints of 
virtue, the latter cancelled them by divine autho- 
rity; so that in either case, they were relieved 
from the embarrassing fears of future consequen- 
ces. Perhaps Pagan Rome was never so atheis- 
tic as Papal Rome. 

We may well be ready to conclude that so deep 
corruption and folly, armed with such unlimited 
power, would be essentially intolerant and cruel 
in the administration of its principles throughout 
the entire range of their operation. It was even 
so. The tender mercies of this wicked hierarchy 
were cruel! — what then their cruelty itself? 
By the experience of ages, they acquired the art 
of torture to perfection ! That irreconcilable 
hatred to Protestants, which is utterly inseparable 
from (misnamed) Catholocism, pervaded the 
whole mass or body, from the vitals to the ex- 
tremes of the extremities ; and the whole Popish 
world breathed an atmosphere of threatening and 
slaughter against heretics. Merciful, just God ! 
what scenes of corruption and cruelty, of martyr- 
dom and blood, the historic page unfolds ! Much 



PERILS OP POPERY. 57 

more minutely, and vividly, and awfully is it 
written by Thy hand of vengeance in the book of 
Thy Omniscience ! 

Cruelty, treachery, and crime of all descriptions, 
are the concomitants and offspring of usurpation. 
Usurped authority is unsettled, because it is ille- 
gitimate ; and therefore the usurper is suspicious 
of danger when there is not even its shadow. 
But shadows and phantoms are sufficient to make 
the stout heart tremble, when the hand of con- 
science points to guilt, and justice invokes ven- 
geance. Guilt, if not natural disposition, makes 
the usurper a tyrant also, and thus propagates 
itself. Conscience sometimes becomes seared to 
any impression of humanity or generosity: it 
may become nature by habit to be ungenerous 
and inhuman, and then ivanton cruelty may as- 
sume the place of what originally proceeded from 
a real or supposed necessity or peril. This is 
the secret of Popish cruelty; and it is partly 
wanton, though it was also necessary to self- 
preservation. Power, usurped by the tedious 
encroachments of ages, is too tenacious of its 
privileges and emoluments readily to be given 
up — it must be jealously watched over and 
guarded; and religion, justice, and future retribu- 
tion are but bugbears to its unprincipled posses- 



58 PERILS OF POPERY. 

sors. Hence the intolerance and cruelties of 
Rome upon system ; always in proportion to her 
ability to manifest the one, and to inflict the 
other. Like the robber, who, to escape detection, 
adds murder to theft, or the assassin, who to con- 
ceal his crime repeats it ; Rome has extermina- 
ted heretics to prevent her own detection, or, to 
change the figure, imbrued her hands in the blood 
of its witnesses, least they should convict her be- 
fore mankind of her perfidy to the murdered 
truth. 

The vanity that prompted its aspirings, had 
alone been sufficient to produce this characteristic 
result of the Popish system. The claim to be the 
only true Church would of itself have produced 
intolerance; and resistance, by wounding the 
pride that created it, would insure vengeance in 
proportion to her ability to inflict it. Non-resist- 
ance or non-existence would have been the alter- 
native proposed to its enemies by inflated human 
nature, clothed with an exclusive fancied or pre- 
tended sanctity and divine authority. Intolerance 
and persecution have ever been found in intimate 
connexion with imposture and exclusive claims. 
To vanity then, added to imposture, and wan- 
tonness from habit, is to be ascribed the intolerant 
and persecuting spirit of Rome. 



PERILS OF POPERY. 59 

Itself despotic, Popery is the friend and ally of 
despotism, the parent of atheism, and womb of 
anarchy. The despotisms political and religious 
are akin, and naturally coalesce. It cannot be 
otherwise; for while there is a germ of liberty 
in the human mind either is insecure : where 
the passion for civil freedom predominates in 
character, hierarchical oppresions are likely to 
excite resistance, and vice versa. To crush 
every feeling and aspiration of liberty, or to 
hold a brittle rein, every moment liable to be 
snapt, is the only alternative. 

If association is allowed to be a test of cha- 
racter, the character of Popery is indubious from 
its cherished and continuous association with 
despotism. Its earliest voluntary association was 
with usurpation, which it aided into birth, and 
faithfully, though not disinterestedly, nourished 
and sustained. It was the axiom of the ancient 
emperors from the time of Charlemagne, nor was 
it less the policy of Pepin, that to exalt the 
Church was to confirm and secure their own 
authority. It is exactly the same maxim that is 
embodied in the famous lectures of Schlegel, and 
doubtless recognised and reviving in the old 
despotisms of Europe — that Popery and des- 
potism are natural allies. The most perfect 



60 PERILS OP POPERY. 

system of Church and State — the beau ideal of 
Popish statesmen — is to have a Pope at the head 
of the former, an emperor at the head of the 
latter : the object is, that the Pope should rivet 
the chains the emperor imposes. We cede the 
principle they assume, (it is just in point for our 
argument,) that they mutually support each other; 
but Popery is in the arrears to the secular despots 
for investing her with an ability to triumph over 
themselves, and reign empress of the world. She 
will conspire with them against the universal liber- 
ties of mankind, when herself cannot reign abso- 
lute, in hopes of attaining that end at last; but only 
waits opportunity to seize the reins herself, to 
make even kings the tributaries of her throne, at 
the disposal of her caprices. Nor is Popery in- 
consistent with herself, when she is thus time- 
serving. 

Unhappily for mankind and for the interests 
of religion, its counterfeits have been in every 
age found in this association. Hence, by many 
who have not had the sagacity or the disposition 
to distinguish true religion from superstition, they 
have been confounded together, and itself re- 
garded as an instrument of oppression. Where- 
ever the prelacy is invested with the peerage, 
and the state provides for the support of the 



PERILS OF POPERY. 61 

ministers of religion ; where mitered infidels and 
a secular church are its acknowledged representa- 
tives ; the truth and purity of religion is consi- 
dered by the great as of very trivial consequence. 
Taught to regard the establishment as a creature 
of government, it is thought no sacrilege to 
employ it as an engine of oppression ; nor 
will its ministers, it is to be feared, be likely to 
scruple much to twist its creed to meet the 
exigences of the times, and to conform to the 
policy of the government. Thus deleterious is 
the influence of the unnatural and anti-Christian 
union of Church and State, in every case, on 
religion. The fatal appendages of pomp and 
power superadded by human invention, resulting 
from this connection, become the splendid tomb 
of its spirit, of all that is vital in Christianity, or 
rather the signal of its departure. But Popery 
is peculiarly fitted, has an adaption per se from 
its construction, throughout its entire system, to 
subserve the end of oppression, and from the 
spirit of usurpation that animates its operations. 
If princes have employed it as an instrument of 
oppression, the instrument has been no less fatal 
to themselves than their subjects ; and it is the 
hope of future empire, as well as present emolu- 
ment, that inspirits the partizans of Rome in 



62 PERILS OF POPERY. 

favor of the despotisms of the earth. Primitive, 
and truly Protestant Christianity, have never 
stood in this connection. Their genius and his- 
tory are the opposite. They teach and main- 
tain all the great franchises of men. To these 
we owe the liberal spirit and institutions of our 
age, and are indebted for all that is peculiar, and 
excellent, and glorious in our republican institu- 
tions ; which continue to depend on Christianity 
for their support, as they owe to her their 
erection. 

The two great enemies whose prevalency is 
most to be dreaded by the nations of the earth, 
both anti-social, and therefore anti-republican, 
are atheistic anarchy and ecclesiastical despo- 
tism. The reign of both, emphatically the reign 
of terror, Providence has permitted, probably for 
a warning to all future generations of their re- 
spective characters. The tendencies of the prin- 
ciples of both, are awfully commented upon in 
their histories; and doubtless their practical re- 
sults would be invariable, supposing them to 
have " full swing," in future experiments. 

It is somewhat singular, that systems, appa- 
rently so opposite and so hostile to each other, 
should conduce and arrive at the same end — the 
subversion of good government ; the one leading 



PERILS OF POPERY. 63 

directly to despotism, the other to anarchy, thence 
terminating in despotism : but such is the fact. 
The atheists of France deemed the utter extinc- 
tion of ecclesiastical despotism, and with it of re- 
ligion and all its appendages, absolutely essential 
to the preservation of the liberty achieved in 
their revolution ; but, in the experiment, they 
plunged into the abysses of a wilder disorder — 
the chaos of anarchy. Both have evinced them- 
selves inconsistent alike with the civil and reli- 
gious rights of man. Were this or any other 
enlightened nation to pass through the fires of 
Popery, supposing its germ of liberty uncon- 
sumed in the flame, its next evolution would 
most naturally be into popular scepticism. The 
deformed caricature of Christianity which Po- 
pery exhibits, is calculated to drive men into 
deism, and thence into the avowal of down- 
right atheism : since men, indisposed to examine 
the truth of Christianity unembodied in its pro- 
fession, and failing to distinguish between true 
and false religion, or to penetrate beyond the 
mere name, will hastily conclude it better to 
have no religion at all, than to renounce their 
liberties, — when to tolerate religion is, in their 
estimation, to endure despotism. This most tri- 
umphantly establishes the importance of " pure 



64 PERILS OP POPERY. 

religion" as the basis of government, especially 
its popular form. Since the obligations and 
sanctions of religion are so indispensible to the 
utility of all the forms of government and the 
stability of social order, that is most friendly 
which is neither calculated to tempt the renun- 
ciation of religious obligation on the one hand 
by its oppressions, nor into tame submission on 
the other by its superstitions. Truly Protestant 
Christianity, in all those great principles which 
constitute the rallying points of all her disciples, 
steers clear of both these difficulties. She does 
not propose to thinking men the awful alternative 
of renouncing their reason and their God, or their 
sacred liberties. 

It has been said, that Rome is but human 
nature exalted, and displaying some of its worst 
propensities ; and, we may add, armed with its 
most licentious principles. And of all the mani- 
festations of that fallen nature, Popery is the 
worst, since it sanctifies all its evils to the service 
of religion ; and has thus corrupted and rendered 
void the purest and holiest religion ever promul- 
gated on earth. It is the worst of despotisms, 
as it is pillared on religion's counterfeit — super- 
stition : the worst of usurpations, for it affects a 
divine right, and, clad in the habiliments of sane- 



PERILS OF POPERY. 65 

tity, seizes in the name of Heaven: the worst 
species of intolerance and persecution, since it 
gratifies the basest and most malignant passions, 
under pretence of advancing the glory of God, 
and the salvation of his creatures. Nor is the 
bodily organization of that nature better adapted 
to its present mode of existence, perfect as is 
that adaptation, and unsuitable to any other 
mode, than is the Popish system to advance 
these unhallowed objects. 



66 



CHAPTER III. 

REFLECTIONS ON THE ANTI-REPUBLICAN AND ANTI-SOCIAL 
ASPECTS OF POPERY CONTINUED, AND APPLIED TO THE 
PECULIAR INSTITUTIONS OF REPUBLICAN NORTH AMER- 
ICA. 

It is a position capable of the clearest 
manifestation that a republican government is 
more susceptive to the control of Popery than 
any of the other forms, on the supposition that 
its people only equal in intelligence the subjects 
of the other governments, or that the majority 
are under its religious influence. In monarchies, 
whether limited or absolute, but especially in the 
latter, the power of the emperor or king seems 
to be a salutary counterpoise to the power of the 
priesthood; prevents its becoming absolute and 
universal, and represses the ambition of the Pope 
by intimidating encroachment; though history 
proves that conjunctures may occur in which 
even this formidable obstacle may be insufficient. 
In a republican government, on the contrary, 
where the majority rule, there is no check but 
what exists in the people themselves to the en- 



PERILS OF POPERY. 67 

croachments of the priesthood ; no superior, civil 
power to contest with them the absolute subjec- 
tion of the people : hence, if they are only igno- 
rant and pious enough to submit to the arbitrary 
government of the Pope and his priests, to sur- 
render themselves, with all their present and eter- 
nal interests to their safe-keeping, the contest is at 
an end. In a republic, if they but eradicate the 
difficulties which lie in the way of their success 
with the populace, their work is effected. In the 
monarchical, after they have succeeded with the 
people, they have yet to combat the more for- 
midable influences of the ambition and power of 
the throne. So that, in the supposed circum- 
stances, monarchical government seems to be a 
necessary check to the encroachments of Papal 
ambition. 

But whence, it may be asked, whence the na- 
tural coalescence and continuous association of 
Popery with the despotisms of the earth, if the 
republican form of government is so suitable to 
her success? For the obvious reason, that, though 
presenting a more direct path to success, her sway 
would be more precarious : since, in a republic, 
where no military despot is supposed to exist ta 
protect his natural ally, the Church, the surprises 
of resistance to hierarchical oppressions are more 



68 PERILS OF POPERY. 

to be dreaded, and might be anticipated, where a 
germ of liberty should survive the surrounding 
wreck. Hence Rome prefers a surer, though less 
direct pathway to power. She would divide the 
spoils rather than risk their being wrested from 
her hand by a populace liable to be enraged by 
her oppressions. Besides, if we be permitted to 
take her pride and ambition into the account, it 
would better sort with them to aspire to suprem- 
acy among kings, and amid the grandeur of 
thrones, and to hold despots as vassals in their turn. 
The institutions of our Republic are based on 
principles exclusively Protestant in contradistinc- 
tion to Popery. They not only imbue the spirit 
of the age we live in, but deeply impress all the 
institutions of this country. Admit this to be 
the fact — admit that principles exclusively Pro- 
testant enter into the very genius of our govern- 
ment, are indispensable to its preservation, and 
inseparable from its existence; and you have 
here prima facie evidence of the hostility of 
Popery to the popular form of government; that 
it is destructive of it in its nature and in all its 
tendencies ; that it is ready to pull down the col- 
umns that support it, to remove the key-stones 
which bind its arches together, and to banish the 
genius that presides within it. 



PERILS OP POPERY 69 

That perfect liberty of thought and action, 
unrestricted only in so far as restriction is abso- 
lutely necessary to the maintenance of public 
order and tranquility and the sacredness of pri- 
yate character and security, which is at once the 
glory of Protestantism and of our Constitution, 
Popery has ever opposed and persecuted, and 
at present denounces. Liberty of opinion, of 
speech, of the press, in harmony with these 
objects, are exclusively Protestant. The Pope, 
within but a few years, has publicly denounced 
them as "national curses." And if the tyr- 
anny of Rome over nations recognizing Popery 
as their established religion is not as absolute 
as it has been heretofore, it is not to be as- 
cribed to the papal will, or to principles prop- 
erly Popish; it is to be attributed to their ex- 
tortion of the privilege of a milder administra- 
tion of the ruling despotism, and to the spirit of 
the age, infused by Protestantism. 

The intelligence and virtue of the people univer- 
sally who are invested with the sovereign prerog- 
ative of the elective franchise in our country, is 
confessed by all of first and vital importance. 
Their moral and religious, as well as intellective 
culture, involves in it the happy upshot of our ex- 
periment of popular self-government. Did Popery 



70 PERILS OF POPERY. 

prevail, one grand source of popular intelligence — 
the only source of light and purity to the world, 
and the allowed basis of our institutions and 
laws, their expounder and their guardian genius — 
would be taken out of the hands of the multitude. 
The Holy Bible would be prohibited to the indes- 
criminate throng. They are openly aiming now at 
its banishment from the common school system of 
this country, of which it has been deemed a vital 
part, and have been actually succeeding in its ex- 
clusion. What would be the consequence of the 
success of this policy we are not left to imagine. 
The universal ignorance, and error, and vice, 
which prevailed among all orders of society in 
the ages of Popish sway, are what we might ex- 
pect to return upon us in process of time. The 
intellectual and moral condition of nations where 
this policy is pursued, and the state of neighbor- 
hoods among us where the Bible is neglected or 
little known, is standing proof of its unavoidable 
tendency. Deprived of this great teacher, to 
which we owe the refinement of public manners 
and sentiment, which is the glory and boast of 
our Republic, the lower orders of society would 
lose their only fount of refinements; and all the 
other sources in the hands of the higher orders 
would prove insufficient to repress the out-flow- 



PERILS OF POPERY. 71 

ings of profligacy and licentiousness throughout 
their circles. The people, without the right or 
the possibility of appeal to the sacred oracles, 
would be left to the guidance of the priesthood ; 
to whom., if ignorant, or corrupt, or both, they 
would be abandoned, the victims of their du- 
plicity and of delusion, and of every wild excess 
of error : and as regardless as ignorant of their 
deplorable condition. Ignorance and corruption 
in the priesthood must, by a natural reaction, be 
the result of this policy : for popular stupidity, by 
a law of our mental constitution over which only 
master-minds would be likely to triumph, would 
beget indolence in the teacher; and the posses- 
sion of absolute power in every case tempts cor- 
ruption. Thus the teachers would be without 
check, and without incitement to the acquisition 
of knowledge, but especially of religious know- 
ledge, and the people abandoned to their delu- 
sion. Such would be the consequences of this 
usurpation, as, indeed, they have already been. 
Though they might not follow in a day, yet time 
would gradually and inevitably evolve them. 
Already have we seen that Christianity is the 
surest basis of good government, that her auspi- 
cious laws and awful sanctions are best adapted 
to promote its stability: certainly, then, any 



72 PERILS OF POPERY. 

thing that vitiates its principles and corrupts 
those laws and sanctions, must seriously affect 
our government, as it must weaken or under- 
mine its foundation principles, and mar their op- 
eration. We have farther witnessed that Popery 
tends to despotism, and that to effect and main- 
tain this, her ministers have always erected and 
employed the machinery of popular ignorance. 
We might have expected that, unless in a nation 
of infidels, those who fear to put the Bible into 
the hands of the people and of their children, 
would be regarded with suspicion as enemies of 
all sound principle and good government. Both 
Popery and atheism conspire against the Scrip- 
tures, and both are ascertained to be subversive 
of civil order. 

The evocation of that religious ignorance which 
has always distinguished her sway would be but 
a leading step with the priests of Rome. Give 
them up the management of the common school 
system, and you will next find them directing 
their utmost power to the superinduction of po- 
litical ignorance upon it. And if the general 
knowledge of their laws and constitution was 
deemed by the ancient Romans so important to 
the preservation of their Republic, that the twelve 
tables were committed to memory by the rising 



PERILS OP POPERY. 73 

generation, and constituted one of the first ele- 
ments of public instruction, is it not equally im- 
portant for the security of ours ? How much 
more careful ought we to be, with the accumu- 
lated experience of ages before us ; conversant 
with the subversive tendency of popular ignor- 
ance, always accompanied with popular vice, of 
popular institutions ! Let the people be shut up 
in the dungeon of universal ignorance and super- 
stition; they will neither be disposed to prize nor 
to guard our sacred institutions ; and despotism 
will stand without holding the keys secure. In 
such a state, it will require a moral earthquake 
to startle the prisoners from their slumber, and 
fling open the dungeon doors; and even then 
they will not be prepared to exercise their visual 
organs — they would rush forth in disorder, and 
tend to a state of lawless anarchy. Should 
Popery ever succeed in this country in bringing 
about this two-fold blindness, just in proportion 
to its success will be the incapacity of the people 
for self-government. This is its aim: its history 
attests it. Where has there ever been an in- 
stance of popular intelligence, of Biblical and po- 
litical training, associated with the influence of 
Popery. Compare England and Scotland in this 
respect with the degradation of the Irish Ca- 



74 PERILS OF POPERY. 

tholic peasantry. Compare in those countries the 
comparative conditions of mind under the aus- 
pices of these antagonist influences. Compare 
the emigration of the Pope's subjects to this 
country, both from Protestant and Papal states, 
with our native-born citizens; and then judge of 
the pretensions of that Church, and of its claims 
to our confidence. From its whole history, and 
from the present condition of its deluded votaries 
in every country, the truth stands out in bold re- 
lief that it is unchangeably hostile to the educa- 
tion of the whole people. What is the prepa- 
ration of the great body of Popish emigrants, 
and of the people under Popish influence, to ex- 
ercise and discharge the high prerogatives and 
responsibilities of American citizens, he who runs 
may read. When men consent to give up the 
reading of the Scriptures for themselves, and to 
think and decide in religion by proxy, it will 
not be difficult to lead them into an analogous 
course in politics. 

Ignorance and superstition in turn support 
each other. Popular ignorance superinduces, as 
it advances, popular superstition, and superstition 
maintains the reign of ignorance. As Popery 
was evolved amid the deepening shades of error 
and the growing corruptions of the Church, till 



PERILS OF POPERY. 75 

it ripened into a mature superstition, so it is its 
policy to recede and dwell amid these shades, to 
conceal that matured corruption and forbid in- 
quiry, well knowing that popular ignorance and 
priestly tyranny are its only safeguard. How 
hopeless, then, as well as deplorable, is the con- 
dition of that people who are fast-bound in her 
toils ! 

Again: Popery not only tacitly confesses by 
its prohibition of the people to read the Scrip- 
tures, its hostility to the great principles of our 
government, but it is based on the principle that 
the commonality are necessarily incompetent to 
self-government. This follows by just inference 
from the denial of the right of private judgment 
in religion. For if the priesthood only is in- 
vested with the right to exercise their judgment 
and reason, and to determine all religious ques- 
tions for the people, for the obvious reason that 
they are incapable of judging for themselves, it 
is the natural and unavoidable consequence that 
the same weakness of intellect which disqualifies 
them for religious decisions, proves them unequal 
to the great task of political self-determination. 
And hence it would follow that they should 
tamely submit to civil rulers also, whose office 
should be to think, and speak, and decide for 



76 PERILS OP POPERY. 

them, with a sway altogether kindred to the 
ecclesiastical — if, indeed, all civil government be 
not swallowed up in the ecclesiastical rule. How 
simple, how natural, how unavoidable is the 
transition ! How consistently does his Holiness, 
in his late encyclical letter denounce all the great 
franchises of American freemen ! It is only the 
echo of Popery's past history, and the inference 
we have deduced but brings us to the source of 
his impudent denunciation. Hence civil and 
ecclesiastical despotism have ever been a wedded 
couple. They are of a piece. Civil freedom 
and ecclesiastical despotism cannot subsist to- 
gether. Upon religious liberty civil liberty must 
be superinduced in the order of things; and by 
the preservation of the former only can the latter 
be perpetuated. When the shackles of religious 
slavery are successfully imposed, in vain may we 
look for a single germ of civil liberty. 

The prevailing religion and the politics of a 
country such as ours, where no union of Church 
and State is recognized, are not so perfectly dis- 
tinct as is generally supposed. If the religion be 
spirit-crushing, it will assimilate the government, 
or its administration, which is the same thing, to 
its character, by disqualifying the people for the 
enjoyment of freedom, as well as for its protec- 



PERILS OF POPERY. 77 

tion. For instance : bring the human mind into 
religious bondage ; enslave the senses to an ima- 
ginary transubstantiation ; compel it by terrors 
to unlock all its secrets to priestly scrutiny as 
essential to salvation; vest the hierarchy with 
the right to impose upon it self-invented condi- 
tions, to insist on every figment of their own cre- 
ation in order to that salvation ; convince it that 
the power of the priesthood on earth reaches into 
the invisible and eternal world, and that it is de- 
pendant on it for its rescue from purgatorial fire 
and torture ; that the Church, the hierarchy at 
the utmost, is infallible, and must think, and rea- 
son, and decide for it with an authority alto- 
gether absolute, in every thing appertaining to 
religion, and that the priests, their pastors, are 
the oracles of that Church: — get the human 
mind under this religious training, and teach it to 
look up through the inferior orders of the clergy 
to the universal Sire at Rome, whose ministers, 
or rather myrmidons they are — the deposer of 
kings, the vicar of God, the keeper of the keys 
of heaven and hell — and you create in it a super- 
stitious reverence for its spiritual rulers and 
guides, that at once degrades it into the basest 
compliance with their arbitrary wishes, an abso- 
lute subserviency to their despotic will. It is 



78 PERILS OF POPERY. 

now an easy matter for them to extend their 
sway into the region of civil policy, to usurp a 
political influence. As in morals and religion, 
every departure from rectitude, and every step 
in apostacy, conducts, though it be even perhaps 
by insensible degrees, to utter corruption or to 
final apostacy from the faith, so every fresh in- 
road upon the liberty of the human mind plunges 
it deeper and deeper into degradation, till it is 
unfitted to entertain a single sentiment of free- 
dom, or a single aspiration after it. Its liberty, 
like virgin chastity, once yielded to the violator, 
may hardly ever be recalled; and the reception 
of a single bond may leave it impotent to resist a 
thousand shackles. When a man renounces his 
reason and his rights in religion, he is badly pre- 
pared to maintain them in politics: they who 
have ravished him of their exercise in the for- 
mer case, will find an easy prey in the latter. 

It is in vain alleged by the apologists of the 
Papacy in this country, that the Roman Pontiff is 
not the claimant of a temporal supremacy and 
jurisdiction. They do, indeed, disclaim allegi- 
ance to him in the capacity of a secular sove- 
reign, and complain of the imputation as a slan- 
derous aspersion of Protestants. Hence, they 
would have us entertain no apprehension of dan- 



PERILS OF POPERY. 79 

ger from the advances of Popery. But for this, 
as we have before observed, we have barely their 
denial; not a word from the infallible tribunal of 
the Church. Pope after Pope has claimed it and 
exercised the high prerogative. And what Pope, 
ancient or modern, has ever disclaimed it ? Is 
not the Pope even now a secular prince, a Eu- 
ropean sovereign ? His usurped dominion — is it 
relinquished in the Papal States? The principle 
which they contend was a figment of the dark ages, 
and confined to them, is thus involved; and oppor- 
tunity only is wanting to seize again, and loudly to 
assert his ancient prerogative and sway a univer- 
sal scepter. But we may confidently assert, in 
the language of Bellarmine, a Romish authority, 
that, "by reason of the spiritual power, the Pope, 
at least, indirectly, hath a supreme power even 
in temporal matters." On which passage Dr. 
Barrow laconically observes, "If the Pope may 
strike princes, it matters not much whether it be 
by a downright blow or slantingly," 

Assuming, then, the denial by the Papal agents 
among us of the doctrine of the Pope's temporal 
supremacy to be unequivocal, (of which, by the 
way, we demand other and better evidence,) are 
we not still endangered from this indirect power? 
Who would willingly entice that foreign poten- 



80 PERILS OF POPERY. 

tate, who would throw open our country to the 
rapid advances of his influence ? Who can be- 
hold the subjects of even the spiritual jurisdiction 
of his Holiness annually increasing and pouring 
in upon us, ready trained, without feelings of 
alarm? Who can contemplate without agitation 
the evidently advancing influence of a commu- 
nity whose foreign head is not, by the confession 
of all, simply recognized as first bishop in order 
and dignity, but is, at least, endued with the pre- 
rogative of power and jurisdiction over all Chris- 
tians, (all who bear the Christian name included,) 
iu order to preserve unity and purity of faith and 
moral doctrine, and to maintain order and regu- 
larity in all Churches; and who, according to 
Dens, is empowered by the Church to inflict cor- 
poreal punishments on heretics, apostates, and 
infidels, and even justly to punish heresy with 
death, unless the contrary course is dictated by 
policy, as in the present state of the world it is? 
The warfare of Popery and Protestantism is 
only to be appeased by the extermination of the 
one or the other ; and will not clergy and laity, 
will not the whole Popish world, willingly co- 
operate with his Holiness for the subversion of 
institutions based, as we have discovered, on 
Protestantism? institutions, the -r'me principles 



PERILS OF POPERY. 81 



of which have so lately and so unqualifiedly been 
denounced from Rome itself as anti-Popish. We 
are here forcibly reminded of the pleasant story 
of the Grecian youth who, to support his propo- 
sition that he was ruler of Greece, affirmed that 
he governed mother, that mother governed father, 
and then father governed Greece. Admitting the 
premises to be true, the argument of the juvenile 
aspirant was logical and triumphant. Thus, the 
Pope rules the priests, the priests are the instru- 
ments of his sway over the people ; and should 
the Popish population ever become the majority y 
they will rule this country. It matters not whether 
despotism governs directly or indirectly, it is still 
the rule of despotism. The rule of ropery will 
be Papal still, though it be by the low whis- 
pers of his will through the ranks of his Ameri- 
can subjects. The still small voice will be as 
dire and as deadly to our universal liberties as 
though the Vatican were pealing its terrific 
thunders. 

The malign influence of this system, the scenes 
which would follow its ascendancy in this coun- 
try, its effects upon literature and laws, upon 
moral science and public sentiment, upon civil, 
social, and domestic life, and upon our eternal 
destinies, we might here leave the reader to derive 



82 PERILS OP POPERY 

for himself from what has preceded. Take with 
you the genius and accredited history of Popery, 
and you cannot fail to anticipate correctly its 
future results through all these relations in our 
country, should it but be favored with oppor- 
tunity and time to operate its scheme. 

In this event I can imagine the Papal throne 
erected on the ruins of our subverted institutions, 
the Pontiff's court transferred from its ancient, 
and now rather unsettled seat, to the capital of 
this country, and his person surrounded by the 
obsequious minions of his power. But whether 
he reigns in propria persona, or by proxy, it 
matters not. His will is law, and his nod the 
nod of destiny. I see his innumerous agents 
scattered over the broad face of the land : cardi- 
nals, bishops, monks, friars, priests, inquisitors; 
all the orders of the Church servile to his decrees, 
and every officer of the state fulfilling his bid- 
dings. Splendid edifices, costly churches, dedi- 
cated to gloomy superstition, are erected; but 
erected with means wrung by fraud and violence 
from the sweat and toil of the poor and indus- 
trious. Grand fabrics are reared, devoted to 
education ; but they are for the benefit of the 
favored few. Popular education is not only neg- 
lected, but discountenanced; and from these halls 



PERILS OP POPERY. 83 

are to go forth a ravenous priesthood, to feed and 
to fatten upon the vitals of our prosperity, and by 
their corrupt principles and practice to sow the 
seeds of profligacy and licentiousness through all 
orders of society. Here and there, nor far be- 
tween, behold those monasteries and nunneries, 
for the most part secret and impenetrable cover- 
ings of darkness and debauchery, the mere in- 
corporation of rites and ceremonies of prostitu- 
tion and dissoluteness, which brand the pagan 
worship with lasting infamy. Other Tetzels are 
going forth exposing indulgences for sale, differ- 
ing in cost with the varying magnitudes of crimes, 
licensing the highest enormities of guilt, and sell- 
ing heaven for dollars and cents to wretches who 
would make monsters of wickedness in hell. 

But, alas, where are the Luthers to confront 
them! One Luther was enough for Rome: 
another, amid her reign, would share the fate 
of Huss. Papal intolerance has grasped her 
rusty sceptre, and sways it over the faith and con- 
sciencs of her willing or reluctant subjects ; her- 
etics are prescribed, and doomed to racks and 
dungeons, and the all-conquering arguments of 
sword and fire resorted to for their salvation. 
The roll of martyrdom is filling up. Martyrs, as 
of old, who do honor to the Christian name and 



84 PERILS OF POPERY. 

to the Protestant faith, after enduring the indig- 
nities and barbarities of this cruel spirit of intol- 
erance, are seizing their glorious wreaths, and 
joining the spirits beneath the altar who cry for 
vengeance. 

Ah, happy days, when it was the chartered 
privilege of every man to read at pleasure that 
sacred volume which is emphatically the light of 
the world, the riches of the poor, and the conso- 
lation of the afflicted; when every man sat under 
his own vine, and under his own fig tree, without 
fear of molestation — ah, happy, happy days, ye 
are departed ! That light is quenched in the 
dungeon of Popish darkness. That mine of in- 
appreciable treasure is seized by a monopolizing 
priesthood — misers, who, while they plunder the 
poor man of his richest earthly portion, enjoy it 
not themselves. That font of consolation is dried 
up to the afflicted and oppressed. The Bible is 
sealed up ; and he who dares to break that seal 
without a special licence from a bishop or inquis- 
itor, brings down upon himself the heavy chas- 
tisement due to his invasion of the holy interdict. 
That Word extinguished, a more than Egyptian 
darkness is settling upon us; that sable pall of 
ignorance which has long enwraped the Papal 
States, and once a Papal world, is fast folding 



PERILS OF POPERY. 85 

around us ; the aspirings of rising genius are vig- 
orously watched to be crushed; the energies of 
mind are suppressed, and incarcerated and doom- 
ed to pine away in the solitudes of its own cham- 
bers, and its best offspring, if, indeed, it should 
bring forth under such circumstances, subjected 
to the inquisition of the Pontiff or his delegates, 
who, with the barbarity and the cruelty of a 
Herod murdering the children of Bethlehem to 
destroy the hope of the world, condemns it to the 
flames! Nothing can escape unless it proves a 
monster of absurdity and error. The Indexes 
Expurgatory and Prohibitory reigns over the 
whole region of letters. Piles on piles of the 
best works of English literature, collected from 
all our public and private libraries, are sacrificed 
to the evil genius of this gloomy superstition ; 
their incense comes up gratefully before the hier- 
archy; and with them is attempted to be con- 
sumed, and buried ia their ashes, the revered 
names of highest literary fame and immortal 
merit. The works of Algernon, Sidney, Addi- 
son, Bacon, Hale, Locke, and Milton, may suffice 
for a sample. These are all doomed to utter ex- 
tinction; and nothing is left us but such miser- 
able, vile, and infamous trash as are conformable 
to its intolerant, dark, and persecuting rules — the 



86 PERILS OP POPERY. 

low offspring of intellect enslaved, and moral 
sense vitiated and depraved by the spirit of Po- 
pish error. 

All the atrocities of thy former reign, Popery! 
which thrill with horror, and wring with anguish 
our hearts for humanity bleeding at every pore, 
and alternately foams and freezes the life blood 
within us, are acting over again ! The Inquisi- 
tion and auto da fe, have triumphed over law 
and justice, and are trampling them beneath their 
feet. Yes, truly august court of the Holy Inqui- 
sition ! I see thee erected on the ruins of our 
courts of justice, and thy dungeons crowded with 
victims: the ghastly beings stand trembling be- 
fore thee: there heroic manhood, there palsied 
age, there female loveliness, there youthful ten- 
derness, await their doom at your consecrated 
bar. No age, no sex, no infirmities escape your 
vengeance; your ingenious tortures, numerous as 
hell could devise, or cruelty inflict, are all at 
work, to extort the secrets of their breasts, and 
inflict the sentence of your infernal malice. 

Upon the most unfounded pretence or shallow 
pretext this diabolical tribunal sends forth its em- 
issaries to apprehend whom she pleaseth — to 
bring before it the unresisting and helpless beings 
doomed to be the victims of its tortures and its 



PERILS OP POPERY. 87 

deaths. Whoever is suspected of holding hereti- 
cal opinions, or has in any way become obnoxious 
to the vengeance of the judges, or whose posses- 
sions render him worthy of the special attention 
of the Holy Mother , may anticipate the honor of 
a visit from the familiars of these her faithful min- 
isters. For when there is no shadow of proof 
against the pretended criminal, when protracted 
and exasperated torture have failed to extort self- 
accusation, though he be discharged after suffer- 
ing their utmost torments, (if, indeed, he does not 
expire in the operation,) and enduring a tedious 
and dreadful imprisonment, he but obtains his life 
and liberty, with the loss of the greater part of his 
effects, which goes to swell the coffers of these 
saintly robbers, and to augment the spoils of this 
holy Church ! Sacred justice ! tender beneficence 
indeed ! to punish the victims of their Inquisition 
first, then charge them, after having nearly de- 
prived them of life itself, of almost all the rest 
they own, to repay the trouble of their unavailing 
inquest, and for pronouncing them innocent ! 

I see the muffled and ebon band, with dark 
lantern, go forth from the hall of this slaughter 
den of cruelty to execute its purpose by bringing 
in the victims selected for the slaughter. The 
sacred stillness of midnight and the hour of uni- 



88 PERILS OF POPERY. 

versal repose, is usually disturbed to execute their 
fell design. They approach the domicil which 
contains their victim, resting his wearied frame in 
sleep ; they demand admittance of the startled in- 
mates ; the surprised and shivering host, recogni- 
zing in their ominous habillaments that they are 
the agents of priestly cruelty and licensed crime, 
dare not refuse them ; the dumb and breathless 
inhabitants await the summons of the selected 
one ; the leader speaks ; it is the word of destiny. 
Away he is hurried before the inquisitor — the ven- 
erable butcher. Compelled to stifle the voice of 
imploring nature within them, parents deliver up 
the child of their affection, the husband the wife 
from his bosom, the master his servant, the host 
his friend from the protection of his roof, or the 
mother her husband, and the children their father 
to its officers, not daring in the least to murmur, 
nor to solicit their pardon after imprisonment, 
least they should be arraigned as accomplices; 
but they are compelled to go into mourning, and 
speak of them as dead. 

Where is there protection for property or life, 
or, dearer than either, where security for human 
innocence or female chastity, under the auspices 
of this institution ? It triumphs over all law, all 
justice, all order: it is invasive of our hearths, our 



PERILS OF POPERY. 89 

thoughts, and all the heaven-born prerogatives of 
man ; and no man could feel secure in the bosom 
of his family, or even in his nocturnal slumbers, 
under its infernal influence. Nor is it among the 
least of the attendant evils of this bloody court 
that before its systematic espionage, aided by its 
twin engine, the confessional, due confidence be- 
tween man and man, and even in the tenderest 
relationships of life, must give way, and universal 
distrust throw its dark shadow over society ca- 
extensively with its reign. 

Behold a scene of this bloody court, drawn by 
a master hand indeed, but which fails, where all 
description must ever fail, to make us realize the 
dread reality itself: — 

The blood-thirsty inquisitor, who has grown 
gray in the service of the mother of abominations, 
who has long made it his boast that none of her 
priests has brought so many victims to her horrid 
altars as himself— the venerable butcher sits on 
his bench — the helpless innocent is brought bound 
from his dungeon, where no voice of comfort is 
heard, no friendly eye glances compassion, where 
damp and stench, perpetual darkness and horrid 
silence reign, except when broken by the echo of 
his groans, where months and years have been 
languished out in want of all that nature requiries; 



90 PERILS OP POPERY. 

an outcast from family, from friends, from ease 
and affluence, and a pleasant habitation, from the 
blessed light of the world. He kneels, he weeps, 
he begs for pity. He sues for mercy by the love 
of God, and by the bowels of humanity. Already 
cruelly exercised by torture, nature shudders at 
the dreadful thought of repeating the dreadful 
sufferings under which he had almost sunk be- 
fore. He protests his innocence. He calls heaven 
to witness for him, and implores Divine power to 
touch the flinty heart, which all his cries and 
tears cannot move. The unfeeling monster talks 
of heresy, and profanation of his cursed supersti- 
tion. His furious zeal for priestly power and a 
worldly Church stops his ear against the melting 
voice of a fellow-creature prostrate at his feet ; 
and the terror necessary to be kept up among the 
blinded votaries, renders cruelty a proper instru- 
ment of religious slavery. The dumb executioner 
strips him of his rags ; the rack is prepared ; the 
ropes are extended ; the wheels are driven round; 
the bloody whip and hissing pincers tear the 
quivering flesh from the bones ; the pulleys raise 
him to the roof; the sinews crack; the joints 
are torn asunder; the pavement swims with 
blood. The hardened minister of infernal cruelty 
sits unmoved. His heart has long been steeled 



PERILS OF POPERY. 91 

against compassion. He listens to the groans, he 
views the strong, convulsive pangs, when nature 
shrinks and struggles, and agonizing pain rages 
in every pore. He counts the heart-rending shrieks 
of a fellow-creature in torment, and enjoys his an- 
guish with all the calmness of one who views a 
philosophical experiment ! The wretched victim 
expires before him. He feels no movement but 
of vexation at being deprived of his prey before 
he had sufficiently glutted his hellish fury.* 

And now comes the splendid spectacle of the 
auto da fe : or the last act of the inquisitorial 
tragedy — a sufficient number of victims for the 
flames being provided to grace the high occasion ! 
The sanctity of the Sabbath is selected. They 
take advantage of a great festive day to add to 
the awe and impressiveness of the scenes, and to 
swell the crowd of spectators by the leisure of the 
multitude. From the hall of the Inquisition, 
where they are clad in vestments which forestai 
their sentence and foretell their doom, the tortured 
and mangled beings (for the tale of cruelty is writ- 
ten in their haggard and anxious features, and 
emaciated and slow-moving forms,) come forth in 
procession, and move onward, amid the vast as- 

* Burgh's Dignity of Human Nature. 



92 PERILS OP POPERY. 

semblage of the occasion, to the crowded theatre. 
Here are placed the ghastly beings, and over 
against them the inquisitors ; the seats on either 
hand rising in the form of an amphitheatre, where 
humanity deserted of sympathy looks on un- 
moved, and one by one they are called up to hear 
their sentence from the lips of one of the inquisi- 
tors. After an ostentatious eulogium of cruelty, 
mingled with bitter invectives against heresy, see 
you yon priest ascending that desk near the scaf- 
fold, who, having taken the abjuration of the peni- 
tents, declares publicly the conviction of those 
condemned to death, whose doom was already be- 
trayed by that red serge in resemblance of aspir- 
ing flames, sowed upon the santo benito of each, 
and of the heretics, who, in addition, have their 
own pictures painted on their breasts, and devils, 
dogs, and serpents, open-mouthed, about it. Now 
the hypocritical monsters, exposing to the awe- 
struck multitude the tender mercy of essential 
cruelty, deliver up these beings, the mere shadows 
of humanity through previous and protracted tor- 
tures, starvation, and incarceration, to the civil 
judge, no longer but the tool of Popish power, 
with much reluctance, earnestly beseeching the 
secular arm not to touch their blood, or put their 
lives in jeopardy. And yet somehow, not only 



PERILS OF POPERY. 93 

now, but uniformly, it happens, at the same time, 
that the civic judge never revokes the sentence 
written upon their habits by these merciful eccle- 
siastics in characters of fire, except that all who 
die in the faith shall have the important advan- 
tage, the wretched privilege, of first being stran- 
gled to death, and then burnt to ashes. Away the 
agonized, the helpless, and uncompassionated 
victims are hurried to the Ribera, or place of ex- 
ecution. The negative and relapsed are first 
strangled and burnt. Now the professed, who 
persist in heresy, mount the stakes by ladders 
about four yards high, with a small board at the 
top of each to seat the sufferer. The Jesuits, 
after exhorting them in vain to be reconciled to 
the Church, depart ; but not before they have con- 
signed them over to the devil, who, they assure 
them is standing near, ready to receive their souls 
and bear them to the flames of hell. Hear that 
pandemonium shout. The infuriated multitude 
cry, " Let the dogs beards be made." This is the 
signal to thrust those flaming furzes, fastened to 
those long poles, against their faces, till they are 
burnt to cinder; and the work is accompanied 
with acclamations of frantic joy. Fire is at length 
set to the dry furze below, over which the victims 
are chained so high that the top of the flame sel- 

H 



94 PERILS OF POPERY. 

dom reaches higher than the seat they sit on, so 
that they are rather literally roasted than burnt. 
In vain, during this process, do they cry out, as 
long as they are able, " Pity for the love of God !" 
The sympathies of that Popish rabble are frozen 
at the fountain. They have no sympathy but 
with their cruel superstition. All sexes and ages 
behold this scene with evident transports of joy 
and satisfaction. Merciful, mysterious God ! why 
sleep thy thunders? Why wake they not to 
avenge the cruelties inflicted on thy creatures — 
to vindicate the cause of injured innocence and 
of thy tortured saints? The time is hastening 
when thou wilt ! 

There was a time when these scenes might not 
be acted in this land, once free; when Popery 
measured the manifestations of her intolerance 
by her power, then weakness ; when such scenes 
as these, conjured up by fancy, told upon Ameri- 
can ears like idle tales that never could be real- 
ized. But the spirit of Popery evolving as grad- 
ually as its power increased, it was on the eve of 
triumph, had passed the Rubicon and mocked re- 
sistance before it was regarded as an enemy ; and 
now these times are no more. Those who still 
carry Protestant and human hearts in exterior 
conformity to Popish sway, may look on, but dare 



PERILS OF POPERY. 95 

not intermeddle ; and should they revolt or mur- 
mur the same doom awaits themselves. Not even 
a sigh or murmur must be heard ; and as in Spain, 
in Italy, the Indies, and all Papal countries, the 
mere refusal of homage to the procession of the 
host, passing along our crowded thoroughfares, 
leaves one open to the vengeful sport of a mer- 
cenary and bigoted soldiery, to be struck to the 
earth, or run through with a bayonet. 

Ah, whither now are fled the freedom and hap- 
piness we once enjoyed? Where is the sacred 
instrument of the Constitution, charter of our uni- 
versal liberties, which we vainly hoped should 
never be violated, but should go down with the 
revolving ages of time, enlightening and cheer- 
ing the successive generations of our beloved 
land ? Where the right, or rather exercise of free 
suffrage it guarantied to all our citizens ? Where 
our righteous laws and seats of justice ? Where 
our administrators and legislators, chosen by the 
voice of a nation of freemen ? Where all our 
great franchises? Where? All gone! Our lib- 
erties, civil and religious, gone ! All our distin- 
guishing institutions gone ! Our schools for pub- 
lic instruction gone ! Our prosperity turned into 
adversity! our Bibles burned! our Protestant 
temples, the home and the guardians of liberty, 



96 PERILS OF POPERY. 

consumed, or desecrated by Popish mummery ! 
Liberty is no more the pride, and the boast, and 
the song, through the length and breadth of the 
land ; and if it was, it were but an empty name. 
Liberty of opinion is no more ; liberty of speech 
no more ; liberty of the press no more. Our glo- 
rious eagle, mystic genius of our Republic, has 
plumed his wings and departed. No more the 
magnificent fabric of our government, reared by 
the iron-hands of the master-builders of the Rev- 
olution, lifts its lofty summit to the view of an ad- 
miring world ; that glorious edifice, which stood 
unrivalled amid the nations of the earth, or in his- 
toric fame ; whose splendors attracted the envy of 
them all, at once their terror and the world's hope ; 
which promised its emancipation from civil bon- 
dage, and made tyrannic thrones to totter to their 
base; ingloriously to its protectors, responsible to 
a world and to Heaven for its preservation, is fal- 
len, is fallen! — its collossal pillars, its mighty 
arches — all, all its splendors perished in these 
crumbling ruins, which scarcely tell that it ever 
existed. 

Shades of our Revolutionary heroes ! could ye 
have thought that the achievements which your 
valor won from the British foe was only obtained 
shortly to be merged in Papal despotism; that the 



PERILS OF POPERY. 97 

glorious institutions of your wisdom ye hoped 
would be immortal, should so short a time survive 
yourselves, that ghastly thought, like a gloomy 
spectre chuckling at your foolish strife, had un- 
nerved your arms ere victory had crowned their 
struggle, and riveted more firmly the British chain 
upon them — a yoke infinitely more supportable 
than that which Rome proposes. 

Such, Popery, as I have depicted, thee thou 
wast, and such I see thee yet prospectively, 
shouldest thou ever be enthroned, alas! on our 
crushed liberties ! 



That the scenes depicted are not a caricature of 
practical Popery as it has existed under circum- 
stances more favorable to the full development of 
the system, will be questioned by none whose 
acquaintance with the light which history throws 
upon those subjects qualifies him to form an accu- 
rate judgment. I might add that intelligent Ro- 
manists themselves will not deny that these scenes 
are based in faithful ecclesiastical history, and con- 
tent themselves, in seeking to evade their force, 
by representing them as mere accidental excres- 
cences, not properly resulting from the essential 



98 PERILS OF POPERY. 

spirit and genius of their system : a plea which 
the preceding pages abundantly confute. But 
even those who are indisposed to contend that 
they are not laid in the genuine history of Popery 
through the long night of its terrific reign, may 
feel disposed from a mis-placed charity, drawing 
unauthorized conclusions from its more superficial 
American and modern aspects, and from the char- 
acter of the American people, to question our 
country's being in danger of becoming the thea- 
tre of such a scene ; that modern Popery, though 
ascendant, would neither have the disposition nor 
the temerity to aim at the superinduction of such 
a state of things ; and that, allowing she had, it 
would be utterly impracticable. It will be seen, 
however, in the further prosecution of the sub- 
ject, that supposing such clemency and meliora- 
tion, we shall not be indebted for them to any 
change in the theoretic or practical system of 
Popery, but to extraneous and countervailing in- 
fluences; and that it may be reasonably fear- 
ed that, if sufficient time be given it ere its 
last downfall to combat these influences, the time 
is coming when the appalling scenes will be more 
than realized. 



99 



CHAPTER IV. 

POPERY NOT CHANGED FOR THE BETTER. 

It is now in place to consider the second 
general result of the assumed infallibility of the 
Church of Rome ; the position that it creates a 
total insusceptibility, an inherent and eternal hos- 
tility to melioration or improvement, which sheds 
its conservatory influence over the whole mass 
of corruption, and insures similar results in simi- 
lar circumstances (or circumstances equally fa- 
vorable,) in accordance with the law regulating 
the indissoluble connexions of causes and effects. 
This principle occupies a lofty and guardian 
eminence amid the system of Popery ; it mocks 
the idle hope of essential reform, and looks down 
with a repellant aspect upon the first preposter- 
ous motion towards innovation. "A religion 
which is founded on the assumption of a super- 
natural exemption from error on the part of its 
adherents, may be confuted by argument, sup- 
pressed by force, or relinquished from conviction ; 



100 PERILS OF POPERY. 

but it is impossible to conceive of its susceptibi- 
lity of change. 

This consideration we oppose to the plea of 
that false and ill-timed charity which, admitting 
all the dark features as delineated to be true to 
the life of the ancient system, still literally " hop- 
eth all things and believeth ail things," nay, 
even " against hope believeth in hope," in favor 
of modern Popery. 

¥ We persist," says one, whom we have 
quoted more than once,* "in maintaining that 
the adherents to Popery are materially changed, 
in contradiction to their express disavowal ; and 
while they make a boast of the infallibility of 
their creed, and unalterable nature of their reli- 
gion, we persist in the belief of its having expe- 
rienced we know not what melioration and im- 
provement. In most instances, when men are 
deceived, it is the effect of art and contrivance 
on the part of them who delude them: in this, 
the deception originates with ourselves ; and in- 
stead of having false witness against our neigh- 
bour, such is the excess of our candor, that we 
refuse to credit the unfavorable testimony which 
he bears of himself." 

* Robert Hall. 



PERILS OF POPERY. 101 

We are aware that it has been alleged by Pro- 
testants, and successfully urged against the in- 
fallibility of the Church of Rome, that inconsist- 
ent doctrines have been taught by the same 
Church, that they once held doctrines which they 
now disavow, and they now hold doctrines 
which they once did not hold, and that many of 
the doctrines and axioms of the Church were 
once unsettled questions, This may be supposed 
to militate against our inference from her infalli- 
bility, — that it precludes melioration in the system, 
or in its results ; the pretension to infallibility by 
her votaries to the contrary notwithstanding : it 
may be said, that if she has changed, she may 
change again; that there is nothing to prevent 
the recurrence of like inconsistencies. To this, 
we reply, that we can conceive of much to pre- 
vent their recurrence. Experience, which teaches 
fools, will keep the Church of Rome on her guard 
against the repetition of an oversight which has 
already endangered the success of her distin- 
guished pretension, and given her sophists and 
apologists infinite trouble and uneasiness ; she 
will not be so impolitic as palpably to do what 
she denies she ever has done, and be guilty of 
any obvious incongruity similar to those which 
have taxed the utmost ingenuity and effrontery 



102 PERILS OF POPERY. 

of her ablest artists to cover. The robber who 
has once betrayed himself by ill management, 
will provide against the recurrence of detection 
by similar means in his subsequent exploits. 
Besides, in the advances of the system towards 
maturity, it had a susceptibility to change which 
can no longer be supposed to exist. Ere it ar- 
rived at its maturity, its adjustments must have 
subjected it to those petty alterations which ac- 
cord with the progress of all human inventions ; 
but since it has reached a perfection that it never 
can surpass, since its particular arrangements 
and its general adaptation can never be exceeded, 
with the advantage of change the temptation 
ceases. These considerations will be deemed 
sufficient to clear up this point, though others 
might be adduced. 

That our language may escape a perversion to 
which it might otherwise be liable, we will antici- 
pate, by a cautionary suggestion, a paradox 
which will not escape the reader's notice — a pa- 
radox that has an actual subsistence in Popery. 
Popery is as time-serving in her policy, as she 
is unchangeable in the ends to which she is 
adapted, her distinguishing characteristics, and 
her essential and fundamental principles. Hence 
a perfect uniqueness and an infinite versatility of 



PERILS OF POPERY. 103 

aspect may, with propriety, be affirmed of her in 
the same breath. The same crooked casuistry 
which prompted the emissaries of Rome to deny 
the cross and passion of Jesus Christ as a mali- 
cious aspersion of the enemies of Christianity, 
to conform it to the prejudices of the Chinese, 
and which distinguishes their unblushing denial 
of the odious features of their system in this 
country, is but in accordance with the essential 
and universal duplicity of the system. This we 
might have expected. Popery would be untrue 
to her well-established characters of compromise 
and imposture, if she did not seek to conform her 
policy to the exigences of the times. Whilst 
its inalienable spirit and essence, a spirit of en- 
croachment, usurpation and unbounded lust of 
dominion is deeply impressed in its system of 
error, and characterises all its living agencies and 
universal history; it matters not what trivial 
changes and modifications its policy may un- 
dergo. Its outer aspects are things to be as- 
sumed as expediency may dictate. This cir- 
cumstance renders her doubly dangerous ; for by 
it she can almost deceive the very elect, and 
therefore finds an easy prey in the credulous and 
unwary. Doubtless she would come forth in an 
entirely new armour, could such a change attain 



104 PERILS OF POPERY. 

her ends, and insure a readier victory and as 
permanent a conquest; but that can never be 
the case, since there can never be a necessity — 
since her means are as apt as her ends are 
inglorious, or as human ingenuity can contrive 
to secure them. As it is she would suit her 
weapons to the period of her existence ; and they 
are inexhaustible, and in as great variety as 
abundance. In her arsenal all extremes meet, 
all paradoxes centre. When she cannot storm 
she will undermine. She is indeed unchanged 
for the better. If she is quite imposing and 
accommodating now, intolerance, cruelty, and 
universal bondage would follow her success to 
the utmost of her wishes, as they do now of her 
ability, as far as policy and expediency will admit. 
Be assured its present flattering aspects and pre- 
tended conformity to the genius of this govern- 
ment, and the demands of the age, are but super- 
ficial. Her present kindness is the arch-fiend's 
mock, the traitor's kiss — the sure harbinger of our 
ruin if we suffer the delusion ! What else can we 
expect of a system evinced in its principles and 
practical operation through successive centuries, to 
be presumptuous, usurpative, and despotic ; inva- 
sive alike of civil and religious freedom ; essen- 
tially licentious, and cruel, and unjust ; notorious 



PERILS OF POPERY. 105 

for its lying wonders and gross impostures ; tor- 
tious in all its influences upon society ; and dis- 
tinguished by §very species of duplicity and 
treachery, by low cunning and intrigue, and for 
its perfidy to God as well as man. 

We have seen that philosophers have not been 
more at a loss to fix the local residence of the soul 
in the 'human body, than have the Romish rea- 
soners to ascertain the seat of infallibility in their 
(so styled) Church. We believe, however, it is in 
modern times pretty generally agreed that this 
glorious attribute presides in general councils, as 
representative of the Church either solely or con- 
jointly with the Pope. For a Papist, then, to 
condemn the proceedings or the decrees of this au- 
thority, or for this authority embodied in different 
councils headed by their several Popes to clash, 
would be a virtual renunciation of the doctrine of 
infallibility — at once " the chain which keeps its 
members fast bound to its communion: the charm 
which retains them within its magic circle ; the 
opiate which lays asleep all their doubts and 
difficulties ; the magnet which attracts the de- 
sultory and unstable in other persuasions within 
the sphere of Popery ; the foundation of its whole 
superstructure, the cement of all its parts, and 
its fence and fortress against all inroads and 



106 PERILS OP POPERY. 

attacks." In a predicament how truly ridiculous, 
does this involve the votary of that system who 
dares to denounce the persecutions resorted to by 
his Church to maintain and extend her dominion 
for many ages ! No bulls of Popes, authorised 
by councils, no persecuting tenet ever propa- 
gated and sanctioned by them, can ever con- 
sistently be called in question by a votary'of that 
system, of which infallibility, is the centre ; whose 
Church, in virtue of her infallibility, cannot, at any 
time, cease to be orthodox in doctrine, or fall 
into any pernicious errors, constituted by Divine 
warrant judge of all controversies in religion, and 
in whose decisions all Christians are in conscience 
bound to acquiesce. 

Allow me here to record a sample of the prin- 
ciples of Popery, undisputably sanctioned at that 
tribunal which, if the pretension has any thing 
more than ideal existence, must be the seat of 
infallibity, amply sustained by the highest order 
of Popish authorities, and embodied in the history 
of Popery for ages, ratified by the action of the 
last great council, and for which the Church to 
this day stands justly responsible ; which must 
reduce its modern advocates to this alternative, — 
either they must admit them or deny them to be 
sound and characteristic of their religion. Now 



PERILS OF POPERY. 107 

if they deny them to be the genuine principles of 
Popery, they give up the infallibility of the 
Church : if on the contrary they admit them to 
be the decrees of infallibility, they confess them 
to assert the principles of Popery in modem 
times, for it is not Popery but the age that is 
modern. 

The necessity of producing a multiplicity of 
proofs that the obnoxious principles of which we 
complain have emanated from the decrees of that 
tribunal admitted to be infallible by the majority 
of Papists at the present day, is obviated by the 
fact, that its modern advocates among us do not. 
cannot, dare not deny them to be genuine in the 
face of the highest historical evidence ; but, that 
to parry their force, they institute a subtle dis- 
tinction between the doctrines of their Church ; 
assuming that these principles, the open avowal 
of which they find would be so inimical to their 
success, are not to be regarded as points of faith, 
and therefore, though issuing from the fountain- 
head of infallibility, the offspring of mere falli- 
bility. They are then, it must be confessed, the 
admitted principles of the infallible councils ; 
which, if it were not admitted, it would be no 
difficult matter to prove. To be doubly sure, 
however, we may add to their own confession of 



108 PERILS OF POPERY. 

guilty a single sample or two, which involves 
the three grand charges of interference in the 
business of the magistracy, the violability of 
faith with heretics, and that principle which 
authorizes persecution in all its horrid shapes. 

Under the immediate auspices of the great 
Council of Constance, composed of delegates 
from every kingdom and country of Europe; 
held in the presence of the Emperor Sigismund, 
and many other sovereign princes, called by the 
order of a Pope, and signalised by the absolute 
deposition of two pontiffs, a forced abdication of 
a third, and the creation of a fourth; which ex- 
tinguished a schism of forty years, and reunited 
the obedience of Christendom under one head, 
John Huss, the Bohemian reformer was arrested, 
cast into prison, and publicly burnt alive. This 
council decided that the "safe conduct" of the 
emperor, in reliance on which for protection he 
was induced to make his appearance before it, 
was no impediment to the exercise of its juris- 
diction, and that the ecclesiastical judge was 
perfectly competent, notwithstanding it to take 
cognizance of his errors, and to punish them 
agreeable to the dictates of justice; it was decided 
that no promise or faith was binding either by 
human or divine right, in prejudice of the Ca- 



PERILS OF POPERY. 109 

tholic faith, and punishment threatened as a fa- 
vorer of heretical pravity, and guilty of the crime 
of high treason, to any, of whatever rank or sex, 
who should dare to impugn the justice of the 
holy council, or of his Majesty, in relation to their 
proceedings with Huss.* 

The Council of Trent formally recognised the 
decrees of Constance : hence by the decree of 
the last council all these principles are ratified ; 
and it necessarily follows that I and all who 
question the propriety of the decision are proper 
subjects for the flames, according to the decisions 
at the latest sessions of this infallible judge of 
all controversies in religion. 

Take another instance. The great Lateran 
Council, under Innocent III., ordained that " if a 
temporal lord, being required and admonished by 
the Church, should neglect to purge his territory 
from heretical filth, he should by the metropolitan 
and other comprovincial bishops, be noosed in the 
band of excommunication ; and that if he should 
slight to make satisfaction within a year, it should 
be signified to the Pope, that he might from that 
time denounce the subjects absolved from their 

* {Substantially as given in l'Enfant's History of the Council 
of Constance, vol.ii. p. 491, English edit., 1730. 



110 PERILS OF POPERY. 

fealty to him, and expose the territory to be seized 
on by Catholics."* This council too was recog- 
nised by the Council of Trent as representing or 
constituting the Church.t Another instance in 
which these atrocious principles have been sanc- 
tioned at this tribunal would be a profusion on 
this topic, since if but one could be adduced it 
were sufficient to stamp with an indelible brand 
an infallible Church — a Church, which by reason 
of its infallibility, possesses no susceptibility to 
change no more than to error. 

Let us now see what influence this new aspect 
of infallibility might be expected to exert on the 
practical operation of Popery. Not to urge for 
the present that infallibility, being a negative 
idea, is insusceptible of degrees ; that this subtle 
distinction has not emanated from the highest 
authority, but that all its decrees are proposed fey 
it as equally sacred and binding ; and that it car- 
ries with it ample evidence of its being an expe- 
dient resorted to merely to answer present pur- 
poses, and cannot be received as the sense of the 
Church but as purely unofficial, without the 



* Cone. Later. Cap. 3, in Decret. Greg. lib. v. tit. 7. cap. 13. 
f Neque enim per Lateranense Concilium. Ecclesia. StatuiL 
&c, Syn, Trid. Sess. 14. cap. 5. 



PERILS OF POPERY. Ill 

sanction of a general council — not to urge these 
considerations, any one of which is sufficient to 
annihilate this distinction, how does it relieve the 
difficulty? Whether the decrees in question be 
considered as points of faith or in the light of 
principles of action, coeval with the system, 
associated with the most solemn acts of the coun- 
cils and identified in the popular apprehension 
with their most sacred decrees, constituting for 
ages the very spirit and temper of the body, and 
inwoven in the very texture of the moral feelings 
and principles of the sect ; for the carrying out of 
which two powerful agencies are kept on foot, 
the Jesuits and the Dominicans; the one the 
classic for treachery, the other for the most 
wanton and refined cruelty ; in which ever sense 
they be understood, what is the difference as to 
their results? Just nothing. Authorized by the 
infallible authority and all the precedents of the 
Church through ages, and being the prominent and 
distinguishing attributes of its character, they would 
still, if legalized by the " powers that be," produce 
precisely the same effects; would still be equally hos- 
tile to the existence of un trammeled secular govern- 
ment, and subversive of all the rights of man. 

But the Church and its infallibility stands, and 
must be held responsible for these principles; not 



112 PERILS OF POPERY. 

having expressed its disapprobation of them, nor 
even instituted this subtile distinction, either of 
which would be equivalent to the renunciation of. 
its pretensions ; (since an infallible Church cannot 
change, and an infallibility that leaves its sub- 
jects to stumble upon the very threshold of mo- 
rality must be the subject of universal ridicule 
and abhorrence;) until it sanctions and ratifies 
this new-fangled distinction, (which would be a 
suicidal act,) these principles must be classed 
among the immutable decrees of infallibility. It 
follows of consequence, that these are changeless 
principles of the Church, at least till the infallible 
authority shall have otherwise decided; and that 
modern no less than ancient Popery, contains 
all these elements of mischief which once bound 
the nations in the chains of religious and civil 
bondage, and deluged the world with blood. 

But where or when has the self-styled Catholic 
Church authoritatively condemned these ob- 
noxious sentiments, at the charge of which 
modern Papists turn pale, and affect to shudder 
and shrink, and those outrageous practices which 
exalt her character to the summit of infamy? 
What council, what pontiff, since the dark ages, 
has disclaimed them as part and parcel of Popery, 
or interdicted the propagation of these principles, 



PERILS OF POPERY. 113 

and the continuance of those practices? In de- 
ciding on a question so momentous in its bearing 
on the welfare of this country, and perhaps the 
very existence of her happy institutions, ought 
we to rely on the mere asseverations of particular 
individuals of that hierarchy, whose interest it is 
to deny the odious features of their system 
through policy, — a sin sanctified by the end of its 
commission, (to advance the popularity of the 
Church by the denial of unpopular inventions;) 
against the bulls of the popes, the decrees of 
councils, the standing authority of commentators, 
and the suffrage of so many ages ? Principles so 
absurd and practices so infernal, a system so 
threatening in its aspect upon the civil institutions 
of the age, which have proved so fatal to the 
universal rights of mankind, and to the happiness 
and tranquility of nations, certainly demand a 
positive and authoritative disavowal at the po- 
pular tribunal ? The world awaits an indubious 
response in the condemnatory voice of the Church, 
— a response from the highest jurisdiction, from in- 
fallibility itself; but in vain. The towering 
tribunal condescends not to gratify the reason- 
able demand. She concedes no principle, she 
condemns no practice ; but justifies them by her 
expressed or tacit consent. Common justice de- 



114 PERILS OF POPERY. 

mands of her their unqualified disapproval, and 
even this were a small atonement for her bold 
impieties, her awful blasphemies, her foul im- 
purities, and the cruel enormities of her history, 
inked with blood, and pointed and embellished 
with the sighs and breaking hearts of her victims, 
— with martyr-groans and sufferings, pangs and 
blood. When these odious features are as pub- 
licly and authoritatively denounced as they have 
heretofore been advocated and established — when 
the enunciation of his Holiness, disclaiming the 
prerogatives so long cherished by his see, brands 
them with impiety and error, and commands his 
priesthood to relinquish the claim in his behalf; 
when the works which contain the poisonous 
principles and maintain the gross follies of Popery 
share the fate of our best English writings in the 
catalogue of the Indexes Expurgatory, and the 
latter which condemn its atrocities are expunged 
from the register of reprobation ; when the Popish 
clergy cease to extenuate the past crimes of their 
Church, and show symptoms of real regret and 
sorrow ; in a word, when the supreme authority 
of the Church conspires with Protestantism in 
protesting against them all as scandalous abuses 
of religious power, then, but not before, can we 
be prevailed upon to believe that they are mere 



PERILS OF POPERY. 115 

figments of the dark ages, and that modern 
Popery is more innoxious in fact, than when mis- 
tress and tyrant of the world. Nothing less can 
successfully repel the charge. Not even this 
could fully shield that Church from the too well 
founded suspicion of intending to decoy us 
thereby to her cruel embrace — an embrace which, 
" like the embrace of that celebrated image of the 
Virgin in the Inquisition, which grasped the 
wretched victim in its arms, and folding him to 
its breast, transfixed him with a thousand knives 
at once," is the embrace of death ! 

The famous Council of Trent, convened by 
Paul III., in 1545, and continued by twenty-five 
sessions till the year 1563, under Julius III., and 
Pius IV., in order to correct, illustrate, and fix 
with perspicuity, the doctrine of the Church, to 
restore the reign of its ancient discipline, and to re- 
form the lives of its ministers, has, we believe in 
her decrees, not disclaimed one of these odious fea- 
tures of the Church, nor condemned the enormities 
of her history. But on the contrary, she ratifies and 
commends the dangerous and persecuting tenets 
of previous councils. It neither defined the li- 
mits, nor the character of the papal jurisdiction, 
awed by the interdiction of the pontiff from any 
interference with the question of his prerogatives. 



116 PERILS OF POPERY. 

Hence the claims of the Pope are left undefined, 
may we not say purposely by this council, to 
his own arbitrary option, to be advanced in pro- 
portion to the capacity of every age to receive 
them in variable degrees. Surely amid the con- 
flicting opinions of the ecclesiastics of the Church 
as to the legitimate powers of the Pope, it behooved 
that infallible tribunal to determine and settle 
the question for ever. If Popes in former ages 
had usurped powers alien to them, if they 
had advanced claims and exercised prerogatives 
transcending the province of their ceded rights, 
and subversive of civil government, now was a 
fair opportunity for the Church assembled in her 
infallible organ to condemn, and check all future 
aggressions, to fix the standard of their subjection 
to the Pope, for the Popish world, and to meet 
this charge of the Protestant world, ever reiterat- 
ing in her ears. Did it condemn the cruelties of 
that infernal court — the Holy Inquisition — (in- 
appropriate name!) Did it indignantly unca- 
nonise from the register of saints, its first infernal 
minister, and wash its hands from the blood of 
its millions of tortured victims ? No, but by its 
continuance as an institution of the Church, they 
virtually said — " Their blood be upon us and upon 
our children." What was its condemnation of 



PERILS OP POPERY. 117 

the universally cruel practice of that Church, in 
unison with its sacred theory, through ages past? 
It was a heightened cruelty, a hotter persecution 
under its own infallible auspices ! The sacred 
flame burned brighter upon the altars of per- 
secution. The Inquisition but clad itself in fiercer 
terrors and put forth freshened energies. Papal 
persecution in its hundred-handed cruelties stalked 
forth over the nations of Christendom, perpetra- 
ting wrongs and violences to the utmost of her 
ability. The persecutions carried on in different 
countries during the period of the long session of 
this council, and continued many years after- 
wards, is the only comment we offer on the 
character and acts of this pure infallible council. 
Its recollections are alive in traditional tale and in 
historic record, of the Germanic states, of Poland, 
Lithuania, Hungary, Holland, France, Spain, Por- 
tugal, England and Ireland. We waive the 
recital of the horrid and wanton tragedies of this 
period, if not through charity for the Church they 
array in bloody vestments, which deserves to be 
unveiled, yet to save our own feelings from tor- 
ture and check the risings of the spirit of mad- 
dened retaliation within us. We reiterate the ques- 
tion, What infallible tribunal of the Church has 
ever condemned the immolation of the many 



118 PERILS OP POPERY 

millions, variously estimated by historians and 
martyrologists at from fifty to sixty-eight mil- 
lions of human beings through successive ages 
to appease the spirit of this gloomy superstition ! 

Be it remembered that the Council of Trent 
was the last council of that Church and probably 
the last that will ever be convoked to the end of 
time. To it we are to look for the genuine spirit 
and principles of Popery; not to individuals of 
that church in our country, bishops or what else 
who have no more authority to decide on these 
subjects in the name of the Church, than the 
writer of these pages. Nor be it forgot that the 
Council of Trent was in protracted session for so 
many years purposely to resist and destroy the 
Reformation. Then was the time for the Church 
of Rome to have spoken through it her unqualified 
censure of the lofty pretensions of her pontiffs, and 
the cruel barbarities, nay, the inhumanities of 
her persecutions. Then was the time for her to 
have exploded the edicts of past councils and the 
bulls of Popes, prejudicial to the interests of so- 
ciety, and transcending their legitimate powers. 
Then she would have anticipated the clamors 
and charges of Protestants of this day, by answer- 
ing those of her own day, of which ours is but 
the repetition, in a voice full of anathemas, not 



PERILS OF POPERY. 119 

aginst heretics only, but against the absurdities of 
her ancient theory, and the enorties of the past 
practice of her Popes and councils. Then, should 
her own infallible lips have spoken their con- 
demnation as anti-Popish, and not the lips ol her 
erring sons, as now, e'er since fallible like other 
mortals. We might rest the whole controversy 
on the single question — Can this Church prove 
from the decrees of this Council or the creed of 
Pius IV., that these errors are anti-Popish. 

Say not her principles only are the same, her 
spirit is changed since they operate no longer in 
violence and persecution. Beware ! the sick lion 
only waits to gather strength to assert as afore, 
his reign of terror ! Aready, behold, he shakes 
his mane, and nerves his arm to strike, and is 
forging the thunders of his voice to shake and 
terrify the world. Has the tiger ceased to pant 
for blood? Unchain him not, though he plead 
like virgin innocence — he will pounce — his long 
fast has but prepared his insatiate maw for a fresh 
glut! Or can you tame the hyaena? you may 
when Popery is tamed. Under the intimidating 
influence of the light of science, the sun of the 
reformation, and the widely- diffused principles of 
civil liberty, the blood-thirsty beast may crouch 
in his den ; but let the dark cloud of anti-Christ- 



120 PERILS OF POPERY. 

ian influence overspread the heavens and obscure 
these lights, and then he will come forth to his 
work of destruction, and roam as ever in pursuit 
of prey and carnage. Thank God, he is chained 
as yet by these influences ; but do we not hear 
the clanking of his chains and the gnashing of 
his teeth ? True, the rack, the gibbet, and the 
stake, are no longer the instruments of her ven- 
geance; but her crippled power has sent forth 
their harbingers. She shakes the rod with which 
she dares not yet, (as it would be prematurely,) to 
strike. True, Smithfield's victims are no more ; 
but its fires are unextinguished. See its vestal 
flames ever preserved on the altars of their hearts 
by a virgin priesthood, in the Bible-bonfires which 
betimes illuminate our land — sure presage of the 
anticipated fate of heretics, or Bible lovers. And 
for aught we know the machinery of inquisitorial 
vengeance may be providing in subterranean 
vaults, in anticipation of their speedy use. His 
Holiness, it is true, imposes on no humbled mo- 
narch the degradation of holding the stirrup of his 
august saddle, leading his noble steed, or kissing 
his puissant toe ; but it were not uncharitable to 
augur that the haughty occupant of St. Peter's 
throne would not at all disrelish the honors of his 
predecessors in office. Ah, could he, ye crowned 



.PERILS OF POPERY. 121 

heads, ye must yield him your willing or reluct- 
ant homage: all your crowns and diadems would 
reflect their lustre around his apostolic brow, on 
whose nod would hang suspended, not your 
crowns alone, but the heads that bear them ! If 
the Church of Rome is distinguished now by a 
milder and more insinuating policy than distin- 
guished her when she possessed ampler means of 
intimidation and greater capacity of inspiring fear, 
it is not that she is changed; her principles and 
spirit are still intolerant. In her former aspect we 
see the intolerance of power, in her present policy, 
the intolerance of weakness. 

It may be affirmed as an offset that Protestants 
have persecuted in their turn. It is admitted 
that professed ones have. But with equal justice 
do Papists charge these aberrations of her profes- 
sors on Protestantism, to infidels who charge the 
persecutions of the Church of Rome upon Chris- 
tianity. Nay, with infinitely less grace : for who 
taught Protestants to persecute — to whom are 
they indebted for this lesson ? Not to Protestantism 
but to Popery. And besides, it is to be pleaded in 
palliation of their offence, though not in vindica- 
tion of their conduct, that they were but follow- 
ing the law of (what they deemed just) reta- 
liation; a law which, though carried into vigor- 



122 PERILS OF POPERY. 

ous execution, future ages would find still unap- 
peased, and holding the Church of Rome in ar- 
rears. But intolerance, adventitious to Protest- 
tantism, is essential to Popery. None of the 
principles of the former breathe its spirit, whilst it 
is inseparable from the latter. The one stands 
before us its very personification through all its 
history, the other its denouncer and mortal enemy. 
The general history of Protestantism is that of 
tolerance : the universal history of Popery is anti- 
tolerant; the history of a practice persecuting and 
ensanguined in exact proportion to her power of 
molestation, and her capacity of inspiring fear. 
When Protestants persecute they depart from the 
noble principles their name imports; for perse- 
cution is one of the things against which thev 
protest : if Papists should cease to persecute to 
the utmost of their ability and of good policy, they 
take a devious course. Protestants deny their 
principles when they persecute, no more than 
Papists when they act with clemency. 

It is one of the phenomena of human nature, 
that while good principles are frequently enter- 
tained with a practice that forms a satire upon 
them, we rarely find a virtuous life and vicious 
principles coexistent. The world has seldom be- 
held such an anomaly; and if they ever do exist. 



PERILS OF POPERY. 123 

they form the very rare exceptions to the general 
rule. The reason of this is evidently man's fatal 
bias to evil, — a bias acknowledged and deplored 
in every age, and by mostly all poets, moralists, 
and sages. 

Though the passions and appetites may capti- 
vate, and sweep with their rush the enlightened 
judgment, feeble in its resistance while conscious 
of the infamy of its subjection, we do not regard 
it as a matter of astonishment. But when there 
is a coalescence, a natural affinity between the 
principles which possess the mind and the evil 
tendency of nature, we always do expect of con- 
sequence, the full manifestation of the evil princi- 
ples in the conduct of life. We expect the mind, 
in this case, not only to yield to and contribute, 
but to be the source of the stream of corruption. 
In short, we find in these principles an adequate 
cause for the conduct of the possessor. 

If evil, cherished in the united head and heart, 
be unproductive of a kindred practice, we are 
bound to impute the exterior virtue of the cherish- 
er to extraneous influences, to mere motives of 
policy and duplicity, sordid and dastardly. He 
aims, for instance, to attain his selfish ends by 
affecting an air of liberality — to serve vice in the 
livery of virtue. This is one of the workings of 



124 PERILS OF POPERY. 

error and vice ; and thus their agents often worm 
their way into the graces of communities wher 
another course of conduct would at once repel 
them. Perhaps the external virtues of Hume 
made more converts to scepticism than all his 
own writings, together with those of his profli- 
gate fraternity. But all such apparent virtue, un- 
supported by principle, is indeed essentially 
vicious; its motives, its policy, and the ends it 
proposes, are only evil. 

Hence we conclude that the principles of i?o- 
man Catholicism constitute the proper criteria by 
which to anticipate her practice, independent even 
of historic evidence. And any suspension of that 
practice, whilst its principles and spirit remain 
the same, the right application of our knowledge 
of human nature justifies us in attributing to mere 
motives of policy, at the cessation of which the 
stream of practice will fall back into the accus- 
tomed channel the principles assign it. The 
mariner determines his port, unfurls his canvass 
to the breeze, and launches forth upon the deep. 
He knows not how many courses he must take 
upon the liquid element before he gains the des- 
tined port. Though now lagging in a profound 
calm, now by the resistance of adverse gales 
making devious paths, and beating about as if 



PERILS OF POPERY. 125 

without any definite aim ; nevertheless, his aim 
is no less fixed when quietly reposing on the un- 
ruffled bosom of the ocean, nor his energies less 
vigorous when playfully tacking about to make 
the best of unpropitious winds, than when his 
prow is turned in full sail to the desired haven. 
Behold in this the figure of human policy. And 
what is Rome but human nature exalted to infa- 
my and armed with the most licentious principles? 
History, we believe, does not furnish a single in- 
stance of hierarchical reform. Individuals indeed 
have arisen to demand reform in several instances ; 
and possessing the quality of attracting around 
them the large proportion of the virtue and piety 
interspersed among the rubbish and corruption, 
have been compelled to come out from among it ; 
only leaving the great mass in worse circumstan- 
ces, and rendering the hope of reform more forlorn : 
but when or where has an instance occurred, or 
melioration originated with a hierarchy? On 
several occasions this demand was heard in the 
bosom of the Church of Rome, councils were 
assembled for this purpose, but all was abortive ; 
every attempt only proved its own futility, and 
brought derision on the project; all went to 
establish the principle, that the elements of its 
own regeneration are not to be found in the mass 



126 PERILS OF POPERY. 

of corruption; that Heaven has ordained another 
process of cleansing, even the coming forth of the 
better portions of the mass : and, doubtless, had a 
reform been succeeded in, it would have been in- 
adequate in its nature and degree to the evils it 
was intended to correct. Obviously the reason of 
this is, that in proportion to the depth of the fall, 
is the hopelessness of recovery. When the pro- 
fessed ministers of Jesus Christ become the ser- 
vants of corruption ; when they conspire to turn 
a benign and holy religion into an instrument of 
oppression and self-aggrandizement; but especially, 
as in the case of the Church of Rome, when they 
have so far departed from the sacred vocation and 
progressed in impiety, as to vitiate and destroy all 
its essential features, so as to adapt it to their un- 
holy and impious purposes, and converted it into 
a scheme of popular ruin and degradation ; they 
become so far assimilated to the Author of all 
false religions, (as is universally the case with 
their priests,) as to preclude reasonable expecta- 
tion of improvement. Indeed, in such circum- 
stances, any reform not founded in the thorough 
regeneration of its advocates, would be inadequate 
to the case ; they would then abandon the horrid 
system with detestation, and a radical extinction 
would ensue of a system insusceptible of reform* 



PERILS OF POPERY. 127 

Since Popery is a system in its operation, or com- 
ing pre-eminently after the working of Satan, and 
with all deceivableness of unrighteousness, (as St. 
Paul characterizes it;) since it mocks the idea of 
comparison in its unrelenting malignity, in the 
greatness of its fall and in its moral turpitude ; 
since it is without a parallel in its perfect adapta- 
tion to the purposes of civil and religious oppres- 
sion and ruin, unparalleled even in the annals of 
paganism, which was never so terrific or refined 
in cruelty, never possessed equal claims as a super- 
stition, never so prolific of expedients of oppres- 
sion or of such impious daring, and which might 
go to school, were it to revive and flourish, to 
take lessons in the first elements of barbarity and 
persecution of Papal Rome, her true successor ; 
we might as well talk of the reform of paganism 
in the conversion of the ancient world to Christi- 
anity, as of the Church of Rome. Like the car- 
nal mind, whose offspring diabolically generated 
it is, to subdue it it must be annihilated. Never, 
saith the voice of prophecy to be reformed, it is 
to be destroyed by the judgments of incensed 
Heaven. (2 Thess. 2, 8 ; and Rev. 18.) 

Besides, have we not good reason to fear that if 
Rome should ever be in the ascendant again, we 
should experience an exasperated vengeance, the 



128 PERILS OF POPERY. 

heightened horrors, if possible, of a cruelty en- 
raged by defeat. This we might anticipate were 
she distinguished by a malignity less relentless, 
and a more unfeigned horror of blood. Who 
readier to retaliate injuries, real or fancied, than 
her pontiffs in all ages, and whose retaliation 
marked with a deeper malignity? Read their 
bulls, their history, their forms of excommunica- 
tion, their decrees universally ; examine the gen- 
ius and spirit of the whole system ; but especially 
the bull In coena Domini, sanctioned by at least a 
score of popes, which provides that from the Pope 
who begins it at Rome down to the lowest order 
of the priesthood, all orders of the clergy, under 
the shield of a dead language, are obligated by 
oath to pronounce it annually ; of which they are 
all commanded to keep a copy, and which they 
are diligently to read and study to understand; 
which curses the American government down 
through all its offices, curses and excommunicates 
every true-hearted American citizen, and consigns 
them, vindictively, to " eternal fire." 

Do we still console ourselves that Popery is 
changed, that it is not what it once was, what it 
was ages ago? Popery changed ! Its published, 
recorded, and acknowledged principles, as well as 
its essential genius and spirit, deny the charge. 



PERILS OP POPERY. 129 

Popery changed ! As well might the leper change 
his spots, or the Ethiopian his color. Popery- 
changed ! Then it were no longer Popery — call 
it by some other name — all its distinguishing 
features must be evanished, and its principles, its 
policy, and even itself abandoned. Then has 
his Holiness indeed abdicated his throne, cast 
down his triple- crown, let go his lofty preten- 
sions, and flung away his keys. Popery changed! 
when the principles of Popery are notoriously the 
same now as in the days of Gregory the Seventh 
and up to the Reformation ; when the bishops are 
sworn now as well as through that period to ren- 
der fealty and homage to the Roman Pontiff, not 
merely as spiritual head of the Church, but as 
jure divino, supreme secular ruler of the universe, 
and to support the interests of his kingdom against 
tile world. Popery changed ! when the reigning 
incumbent of the pontificate in his recent ency- 
clical letter* sanctions and re-asserts the condem- 
nation of those great rights to which Romanism 
in principle and practice, wherever she has not 
wanted ability, has ever stood inexorably opposed! 
Has he not unceremoniously denounced liberty 



* Published in the Roman Catholic papers in this country, 
and dated August 15, 1832. 



130 PERILS OF POPERY. 

of conscience, liberty of speech, liberty of the 
press, and the separation of Church and State, 
as four of the sorest evils with which a nation 
can be cursed? Popery changed in its intolerant, 
and persecuting, and blood-thirsty spirit — when it 
is irrefragably proved that Popery of the nine- 
teenth and of the sixteenth century is the same, 
by a standard authority in the Romish Church, in 
which it is unceremoniously affirmed that bap- 
tized infidels, such as heretics and apostates usu- 
ally are, also baptized schismatics, may be com- 
pelled, even by corporeal punishments, to return 
to the Catholic faith, and the unity of the Church;" 
that heretics are il rightly punished with death," 
and that "the rights of Pagans and heretics in them- 
selves considered, are not to be tolerated," unless 
the contrary course be dictated by policy !* 

Popery changed ! when the holy office of the 
Inquisition, established by Innocent III., and fully 
in operation in Italy, A. D. 1251, perfected in 

* See Synopsis of Dens' Moral Theology, Philadelphia edi- 
tion, 1842, pp. 107, 114, 117. And let it be borne in mind that 
this work is used in the Roman Catholic college at Maynooth, 
Ireland, the institution in which most of the Romish priests who 
come to this country are educated ; and that an edition of this 
work has been published at Mechlin, in the Netherlands, as re- 
cently as the year 1838. 



PERILS OF POPERY. 131 

Spain and Portugal; and, by the way, henceforth 
in operation into the nineteenth century, has been 
from a temporary suppression, restored by Pius 
VII. so recently as the year 1826 ! 

Popery changed! Her principles, her spirit, 
her agencies for the most part — her object is the 
same in all time : only her power, thank God, is 
changed. Where or when, we ask, was it essen- 
tially remodeled, and put out in a new edition to 
the world. The ancient system is unimpaired, 
and, indeed, forbids in its first principles material 
alteration or improvement; and, though it may 
exhibit a more imposing exterior to meet the ex- 
igence of the times, this flattering aspect, these 
outward adornments, are but the whitewash of 
that horrid sepulchre which contains the elements 
of absurdity, abomination, and ruin. Was Po- 
pery less Popery under the reign of Charles the 
Ninth of France, when she caressed the Protes- 
tants of that country to their delusion, than on St. 
Bartholomew's festive night, when from sixty to 
a hundred thousand were treacherously mas- 
sacred at once ? Romanism the patron of popu- 
lar education, which has ever bound the human 
mind in ignorance ! Popery the friend and ally 
of civil and religious freedom, whose sway has 
ever been arbitrary and despotic, whose ambition 



132 PERILS OP POPERY. 

insatiable; and whose subjects are to this day, 
even under Protestant governments and indepen- 
dent of racks and gibbets, the veriest, because 
voluntary slaves, for the most part debased by 
the spirit-crushing system to which they were 
born and at the bidding of an arrogant priest- 
hood ! What, then, under Popish governments — 
what in the Papal States? Answer Spain and 
Italy! where the machinery of oppression and 
terror is in more successful operation to enforce 
the Papal will ; though even there it is awe-struck 
by the surrounding light of the world and the re- 
quisitions of the age. 

We would add, on this topic, that Popery has one 
element of success in the present day, and of 
future security, should it ever succeed in regain- 
ing its ancient sway, that renders it peculiarly for- 
midable. Fortunately for the ages preceding the 
Reformation the order of Jesuits was not in exis- 
tence. Had it been when Papal Rome was at the 
summit of her power and pinnacle of human 
grandeur, bad as is its history, it would if pos- 
sible be worse. If it had not quenched the kind- 
ling Reformation, it would at least have retarded 
its progress, and vastly diminished its success. 
But doubtless God, who permitted Rome to tri- 
umph for ages, prevented such an organization in 



PERILS OF POPERY. 133 

view of his gracious purposes, since manifested 
in the partial overthrow of this great usurpation. 
Should Rome ever again attain to the summit of 
her wishes, Jesuitism, raised up to prop her tot- 
tering fabric at the Reformation, will form a bul- 
wark of strength around her, will give her a new 
eye of vigilance, a new hand of power, a new 
heart of insensibility, which would increase the 
difficulty a hundred-fold of a revival of the Re- 
formation. 

The monastic orders were from the beginning 
the most zealous friends and promoters of the Pa- 
pacy. Hence, under the auspices of the most 
famous of the Popes, the whole clergy were in 
some sort remodeled and assimilated to that form. 
But all the other monks were separated from men, 
enclosed in the solitude and silence of the cloister 
from any immediate concern in civic affairs, and 
devoted to extraordinary acts of mortification and 
piety ; nor can it be said that any of the clerical 
orders was in an exclusive sense sworn and or- 
dained to a secular activity in the service of God, 
and of the Pope, his vicar on earth. These ele- 
ments were wanting, which Jesuitism supplies. 
As might be expected, they became celebrated by 
the friends and dreaded by the enemies of the Ro- 
mish faith, as the most powerful and enterprising 



134 PERILS OF POPERY. 

champions of the Church. They were the most 
embittered foes, the most inveterate enemies of 
Protestantism ; incessantly stirring up against its 
votaries all the rage of ecclesiastical and civil per- 
secution, and vigorously opposing every measure 
of humanity and toleration in their favor. 

The sworn supporters of the Pope, they ex- 
ceeded in their devotion to the Papacy. What- 
ever diversity of sentiment has existed among the 
other orders respecting the prerogatives of the 
Pope, the Jesuits have always been a unit, as, in- 
deed, the very condition of its existence was their 
support, covert or openly, of his claims ; and they 
have always attributed to the Court of Rome a 
jurisdiction as extensive and absolute as was 
claimed by the most presumptuous pontiffs in the 
dark ages. 

By the very genius and constitution of this or- 
der a spirit of action and intrigue was infused into 
all its members. The discipline of the society in 
forming its members, and the fundamental and 
dangerous maxims of its constitution, (brought to 
light during their persecutions in Portugal and 
France,) prepared them, by a most corrupt and 
reckless casuistry, to merge every interest in that 
of their order ; an order to whose prosperity the 
preservation of the Papacy is vital as the trunk to 



PERILS OP POPERY. 135 

the branches of the tree. In a word, formed to 
simulation and practiced in hypocrisy ; consum- 
mate in the arts of sophistry as they were in the 
tricks of deception ; owning no authority but that 
of the general of their order, no law but his arbi- 
trary will, no interest but that of their society, 
subservient to the Pope's, no rule of conscience, 
no restraining influence but expediency, they pass- 
ed through as many transformations as would sub- 
serve their policy ; compromising with paganism 
they beguiled the heathen, and flattering Judaism 
they beguiled the Jew : to be a Jew, a Protestant, 
a pagan, an atheist, equally suited the Jesuit ; it 
made no difference what his outer garb whilst it 
suited his present purpose. And hence, they will 
still be the most able and indefatigable promoters 
of those principles which have licensed the most 
atrocious crimes, and ruptured the connecting ties 
between subjects and their rulers ; which tend to 
the exaltation of ecclesiastical power on the ruins 
of civil government ; and which kept Europe agi- 
tated, convulsed, a theatre of blood, to the eternal 
disgrace of the Church of Rome, during the two 
centuries succeeding the Reformation. The pe- 
riod of the institution of this order and its speedy 
extinction are in themselves an ample comment on 
its character. Created for the purpose of check- 



136 PERILS OF POPERY. 

ing and retrieving the breaches of the Reformation 
in the sixteenth century, early in the seventeenth 
the Emperor Charles the Fifth of Germany, found 
it expedient to check their progress in his domin- 
ions. They were expelled successively from Eng- 
land, Venice, Portugal, France, Spain, and Sicily; 
and the order finally abolished at the remonstrance 
of Popish governments, esteeming it dangerous to 
the tranquility of Europe, in the latter part of the 
last century. Since that time the order has been 
suppressed, till restored within the last twenty- 
eight years, obviously for making aggressive move- 
ments against Protestantism, and, if possible, of 
regaining the ancient domination of the Roman 
See. Is it a matter to be viewed with indiffer- 
ence, and regarded without surprise and apprehen- 
sion, when taken in connection with other circum- 
stances, that Jesuitism, banished, interdicted, sup- 
posed to be suppressed for ever, should in this 
century be revived, and in active and organized 
operation over the world ? Instead, therefore, of 
having experienced any melioration, or being any 
better entitled to the confidence of mankind, Po- 
pery is from any thing in or connected with the 
system itself, more to be detested and abhorred, 
and its future ascendancy more to be dreaded and 



PERILS OF POPERY. 137 

resisted, than as it existed in the ages of Gothic 
darkness. 

And yet, singular to say, that insidious, capri- 
cious, and time-serving system, with a singl e eye, 
and that one eye immovably fixed on one object — 
that of universal dominion and arbitrary sway; the 
fundamental maxim of whose policy has always 
been that the end sanctifies the means, to the subver- 
sion of all moral distinction, receives countenance 
of our nineteenth century both in England and 
America. We seem to have consigned to oblivion 
all the lessons of the past, and to be insensible to 
the threatening indications of the present. We 
are courting delusion, and fostering, in the vital 
warmth of our bosom, that reptile whose mortal 
fang is ready to pierce that bosom and poison our 
national glory at its fountain. 



139 



PERILS OF POPERY. 

PART II. 
PROSPECTS OF POPERY. 



CHAPTER L 

ITS PROSPECTS IN ENGLAND, 

Every great revolution in time has been pre- 
ceded by a previous susceptibility in its age % 
and the signs of the times are ominous of a more 
than ordinary susceptibility in our age to the? 
success of Popery, as well as of a dark and well- 
concocted design of that system upon the world j 
which is evidently pregnant with springing re- 
volution. 

Now add to the inherent malignity of the 
Papal system, the susceptibilities of the age to 
its success, and how much reason there is for 
alarm. It is impossible, without taking them into 
view in connection, to form any thing like an 
adequate conception of the reality and magnitude 



140 PERILS OF POPERY. 

of our peril. The former is the tinder, the latter 
the spark which is to ignite it. If we can clearly 
discover the fuel artfully arranged at the point 
of concentrated attack, nay strewed all over the 
world, and ten thousand torches in incendiary 
hands to enkindle the universal conflagration, 
will there be room to doubt any longer, — will it 
not startle us from our apathy and impel us forth 
instinctively to arrest the ruin. Upon our coun- 
try falls a weighty responsibility in this contest, 
as it is the selected quarter of attack, around 
which all the combustibles are bearing, and 
whence the ruin of a world, if the incendiaries 
shall succeed, is to issue. 

Let us now turn to its prospects in England 
and the United States, (those great and pro- 
fessedly Protestant nations,) but especially in the 
latter, and from thence it will be easy to draw 
conclusions of its probable destination in the 
world. Let us begin with England, and after- 
wards fix our principal attention on its prospects 
in our own country. 

Speaking of the advance and prospects of 
Puseyism, says a British writer, and Clergyman 
of the Established Church — " At home the con- 
tagion has spread through the length and breadth 
of the land, and by far the greater part of the 



PERILS OP POPERY. 141 

clergy of the established Church are more or 
less contaminated with the plague ! — many of 
them beyond all reasonable hope of recovery, 
and many others to a degree that, at best, admits 
of only a trembling hope. Already do many of 
our churches in populous districts exhibit such 
a tawdry, foolish, Popish mummery, that a 
stranger entering them would immediately con- 
clude that he was in a Popish place of worship. 
In direct defiance of the laws of our Church, the 
communion table is by name and construction 
transformed into an altar, where you may be- 
hold large wax candles blazing at noon day, and 
crosses, and saints, and childish, Jewish, Popish 
toys in abundance, towards which the minister 
bows with all the superstitious reverence of a 
shaven monk or friar. But this is not the worst. 
Let the stranger who comes to worship God 
according to the rites and doctrines of Reformed 
Protestant Church of England tarry a little while, 
and he beholds the professed minister of the 
Gospel mount the steps to the altar, and there, 
according to his own declared belief, < he makes 
the body and blood of Jesus Christ f and in a 
real Popish belief of the doctrine of transubstan- 
tiation, which our Church utterly condemns, he 
pretends to feed the souls of the people with a 



142 PERILS OP POPERY. 

portion of the Redeemer's person! From the 
communion table let the astonished stranger fol- 
low this Popish Puseyite to the sermon, or eve- 
ning lecture, and what will he hear ? Will it be 
the all-pervading and all-prevailing theme of the 
apostle Paul, c Christ Jesus and Him crucified V 
No ; for that glorious subject is to be purposely- 
kept in the back ground to be preached with re- 
serve ; and the sacraments, and the outward vis- 
ible signs, and the services of the Church, and 
the performances of the priest are to be substi- 
tuted for the Savior, and what he has done, and 
suffered, and merited for sinners ! So, again, in 
the sacrament of baptism, these men assume to 
themselves the most astonishing powers and priv- 
ileges; and by taking the most unfair advantage 
of two or three undecided expressions torn from 
the context, and construed without regard to the 
more explanatory and general declarations of our 
services, they teach the most absurd and unscrip- 
tural tenets of Puseyism and semi-Popery for the 
doctrines of the Church. All these * wandering 
stars ? do not, indeed, run into the same excess of 
folly and error ; but the leaven has extended so 
far and so widely, that its blighting, darkening, 
corrupting effects have quite extinguished the 
pure light of the Gospel in many of our parish 



PERILS OF POPERY. 143 

Church ministrations, and so obscured the light, 
the truth and the way in hundreds and thousands 
of others, that those who go to learn what they 
must do to be saved are in the utmost danger of 
being led most fatally astray. Such things," con- 
tinues he, "have we already lived to see; and 
should this downward movement go on but a few 
years longer, as it has progressed through the last 
seven, then Ichabod will be written on our 
Church doors ; for she will not only fail to an- 
swer her intended purpose of enlightening and 
evangelizing the nation, but she will bring Po- 
pish abominations over it, and a darkness, a spir- 
itual darkness, that may be felt. O England, 
England ! already may it be said with truth, 
'They which lead thee cause thee to err, and de- 
stroy the way of thy paths/ "*. 

The natural coalescence of both high-church- 
ism and Puseyism (which is only the former 
pressed out in its legitimate inferences) with 
Popery cannot be denied. With all their ab- 

* The above alarming paragraph is taken from a pamphlet 
lately published by a pious and devoted minister of the Estab- 
lishment of England, the Rev. Richard Marks, Vicar of Great 
Missenden, entitled, " Danger and Duty ; or, a few words on the 
Present State of the Times, and in behalf of Truth, Righteous- 
ness, and Peace." It may, therefore, be relied upon. 



144 PERILS OP POPERY. 

horrence of Popery, high-churchmen have all 
along been fostering its very essence. And it 
must be admitted, that that unholy leaven, never 
thoroughly expurged, but tolerated from the be- 
ginning, and advocated by the more secular cler- 
gy of the Church of England and the Episcopal 
in this country, threatens now to heave the whole 
mass. That mystery of iniquity to which 1 refer, 
is the fable of Unbroken Apostolical Succession, 
down through the assumed continuous line of St* 
Peter's successors, Pope Joan not excepted, to 
the dignitaries of the Church of England, through 
whom the clergy of the Episcopal Church in 
these United States have derived their pure stream 
of clerical consecration ; and on which is superin- 
duced their high pretension to exclusive ordina- 
tion, and arrogant as uncharitable proscription 
from the honors of the clerical character and of- 
fice of the ministers of all other Protestant de- 
nominations. This high-church assumption is 
radically anti-Protestant, a fatal relic of the dark 
system whence their forefathers emerged, and the 
very spring-head of the impious innovations of 
Dr. Pusey and his associates. Perhaps, after all, 
it is not so much to be wondered at, that from 
such a seed, lodged in the bosom of that secular 
Church — the image of the former beast (Rev. 13 



PERILS OP POPERY. 145 

chap.) — should revive and flourish, the aspiring 
and wide-spreading tree of Popery, casting the 
shadowy gloom of its foliage over institutions, 
planted by the hands and watered with the sweat 
and tears, and nourished with the blood of vene- 
rable reformers and holy martyrs. Permit me to 
say, by the way, that by these great men this 
doctrine was never advocated; but on the con- 
trary, they regarded it as a figment of Popish 
superstition : and the writings of some of the 
prelates of the British establishment, who de- 
plored its existence among their high-minded 
brethren as of the very essence of Popery and 
pernicious in its tendency, are now standard au- 
thority against our modern vain-glorious boasters 
of succession. Such an ingredient would have 
completely neutralized all the anti-Popish tenets 
propagated by the reformers, rebuked their im- 
piety in resisting the apostolical throne, and stifled 
the reformation in the very bud of its being. 
Now, to return, high-churchism and Puseyism 
prepare the way for Popery wherever they are 
fully believed and thoroughly understood. They 
throw down, in effect, the partition wall between 
Protestantism and Popery. To be a consistent 
Puseyite, a man must return to the bosom of the 
Roman Catholic Church ; for he acknowledges 



146 PERILS OF POPERY. 

her authority and apostolicity, confesses her dog- 
mas and her doctrines, and, if true to his princi- 
ples, must stigmatize the reformers as schismatics 
for abandoning that Church which ceased not to 
be the true Church of Christ, merely because 
they departed from her communion. All high- 
churchmen, if true to their principles, would re- 
turn to her pale ; since they admit her to be in 
the true succession beyond all doubt ; and if so, 
have reason to fear that they are out of the suc- 
cession, and also out of the pales of the Church. 
For if their Church derived valid ordination and 
ordinances from the Papal see, the power which 
conferred them at first revoked them in dis- 
pleasure ; the same who ordained excommuni- 
cated and anathematized the ordained as heretics, 
and holds them so to this hour. If the succes- 
sion be essential, what rational mind will rest on 
such a sandy foundation when there is a sure 
rock at hand ? Their legitimate and only safe 
course is to retrace the steps of the reformers, 
whom they virtually brand as usurpers in daring 
resistance to their superiors in office, by returning 
within the pale of the Holy Roman Catholic 
Church, and swearing allegiance to the Pope ! 
The conclusion is sufficiently obvious. Whether 
the body of high-churchmen in the United States 



PERILS OF POPERY. 147 

as well as the other side the Atlantic, ultimately 
take part with Popery or not, their principles 
throw their weight of influence on Popery's 
side of the balance. 

Let the British nation be drilled into Puseyism 
and it will not, cannot rest there. It will retro- 
grade into downright Popery, as surely as waters 
seek their level. Let but the floodgates of 
Popery be once uplifted, and no mortal hand 
shall be able to let them down, and the angry 
flood shall sweep them away. If even the Pu- 
seyite teachers would stop short of a finished 
apostacy, the people will not. They will not, 
out in the gulf of religious excitement and revo- 
lution, cling to a plank, when there is a rock at 
hand. If succession be necessary to give validity 
to the ordinances, and they thus rendered valid ab- 
solutely essential to salvation, they will make sure 
of it as meet, at the fountain-head — in the bosom 
of the Church of Rome. And even the teachers 
themselves would be swept onward with the 
popular rush though despite their will. It is one 
thing to raise a storm, quite another to manage it. 
The Papal Jesuit school will finish what the Ox- 
ford began. The former would enter the breach 
which the latter opened up. Though it is doubt- 
ful whether the terms former and latter are 



148 PERILS OF POPERY. 

not inapplicable in this case, since it may fairly 
be questioned whether there be any thing to dk * 
tinguish them except that the one are the dis- 
guised, the other the unmasked servants of the 
Pope. Nothing short of a mandate from the 
Vatican, or the intervention of a miraculous 
agency God is not often pleased to exert, would 
be able to drive back the tide or to chain the 
popular tempest ; and the former cannot be hoped 
as it would involve a miracle of miracles. The 
only conceivable issues to the British throne 
of such a revolution are obvious : its incumbent 
must either renounce the Protestant faith, or the 
throne, the very tenure of which is constitution- 
ally pendant on the condition of his maintain- 
ing that religion. In intimate association with 
these reflections is the fact, that a considerable 
proportion of the United Kingdom are bigoted Pa- 
pists with the grand Agitator (O'Connel) at their 
head, waiting to second the designs of the Pon- 
tiff. Should Puseyism succeed, what a train of 
ruins would follow ! Who can conceive what 
revolutions would ensue and where they would 
end ? Of this, however, we may rest assured : 
England once turned Puseyite, would speedily 
yield allegiance to the Pope ; the popular will at 
his nod would effect it. 



149 



CHAPTER II. 

PROSPECTS OF POPERY IN THE UNITED STATES. 

Add, again, to the evil aspects of the genius 
and tendencies of the Popish system upon our 
free institutions, (which we considered in the for- 
mer part of the work,) those internal and extrin- 
sic circumstances which render this nation 
peculiarly susceptive to its success, and how 
painful and overwhelming are the possibilities 
(to say the least) which their united evidence 
cannot fail to force upon our minds. These sus- 
ceptibilites may be classed under the following 
heads : Those which are friendly to proselyta- 
tion ; those which favor and encourage emigra- 
tion ; those which grow out of the political as- 
sociations of Popery, in prospect as well as in 
fact ; and, lastly, though not least, and most sur- 
prising of all, the extreme ignorance or indiffer- 
ence of our country in its imminent peril. 

PROSELYTATION. 

Accustomed to flatter ourselves that the intel- 
ligence and patriotism of our people, educated 
and formed under the genial light and influences 

M 



150 PERILS OF POPERY. 

of Protestant institutions, is proof against Popish 
and Jesuitical proselytism, we are settled down 
into a profound indifference to the insidious, pros- 
elyting efforts of the Papal clergy, forgetting that 
the Jesuits are the legitimate successors of the 
Scribes and Pharisees, (and, like the servant of 
the prophet, inherit a double portion of their 
spirit,) who, our Lord declared, "would compass 
sea and land to make one proselyte ;" nor do they 
fail to exceed them in the sequel. No order of 
men can be better trained or qualified to impose 
upon mankind. 

" The glorious attribute of reason with which 
the Creator has endowed us, can, since the fall, 
be perverted to any service : there is no proposi- 
tion in ethics or religion too preposterous or too 
horrible to be embraced by it. And in the case 
under consideration the process by which convic- 
tion is wrought is not difficult of solution. Take 
the doctrine of tr an substantiation for example. 
You might carry it round the world, and stop at 
every human habitation, (beyond the pale of the 
Roman Catholic Church,) and you could not get 
a single man, woman or child, to believe it, if it 
were submitted to. them on its own proper evi- 
dence. You might as well attempt to convince 
them that the darkness of midnight was the efful- 



PERILS OF POPERY. 151 

gence of noon-day as to make them believe that 
the consecrated wafer you exhibited to them was 
the 'body and blood, the soul and divinity of 
Jesus Christ/ But go even to men of vigorous 
minds and ripe scholarship, and convince them 
by the subtle sophistries of the Popish theolo- 
gians that God has instituted an infallible Church, 
and that the Church of Rome is that Church, and 
your contest with them is at an end. They will 
believe in transubstantiation or any thing else, 
provided the Church decrees it. The infallibility 
of the Church leaves no room for investigation, 
and makes doubt itself impiety. What right has 
reason to say, 'this is absurd?' What right 
have the senses to say, 'this belies every one of 
us? 5 The voice of the infallible Church is the 
voice of God; and the Church declares, 'this wafer 
is the body and blood, the soul and divinity, yea, 
the whole person of Jesus Christ/ Both must sub- 
mit, not only without examining, but without ques- 
tioning, to that power which cannot err, and from 
whose decisions there is no appeal/'* And with- 
out this, let it be recollected, there is no salvation ! 
Upon this bold and malignant assumption, too, 
together with the charitable concession of Pro- 

* Late Address of the American Protestant Association. 



152 PERILS OP POPERY. 

testants of the possibility of salvation within the 
pale of the Church of Rome, the Papists have 
not failed to levy ample contribution. From this 
assumption on their part, and concession on the 
part of their opponents, they unceremoniously in- 
fer that it alone ought to be deemed sufficient to 
decide the faith of a Protestant in their Church, 
since, on all hands, it is agreed that they may be 
saved within her pale, while there is no such 
mental agreement between Protestants and Pa- 
pists to the same effect in reference to those with- 
in the pale of the latter: as if there were nothing 
wanting to the decided superiority and success of 
a sect — nothing more required to prove its heav- 
enly descent, and its claims to universal accepta- 
tion, than vindictively to seize the thunderbolts 
of Omnipotence, 

" And deal damnation round the land 
On all they judge their foe !" 

The same charitable concession we make to 
the Jews, the heathen, and the Turks ; and the 
same reason precisely might be urged by them all, 
in common with Popery, as conclusive in favor of 
their respective religions, and are equally entitled 
to respect and consideration with such Protes- 
tants as are ready to be imposed upon by this 



PERILS OF POPERY. 153 

shallow artifice of the partizans of Rome. Be- 
sides, this pretension, founded upon mutual 
agreement in religion, would be a still stronger 
reason to sweep us all (the - Church of Rome not 
excepted) back, by the abandonment of revealed 
religion altogether, into the faith of Lord Herbert 
and the natural religionists. But waiving further 
remark on this flimsy subterfuge for argument, 
and in support of a weak cause which it well 
represents, we are at a total loss to perceive why 
Papists lay such stress on the mere concession of 
a bare possibility by Protestants, (against a thou- 
sand probabilities, they also urge against the 
trembling hope of their salvation they charitably 
indulge, and their utter rejection of the idea where 
her votaries are in circumstances favorable to their 
better choice,) unless it be that it suits their pur- 
pose with inconsiderate or weak minded persons. 
One would be inclined to think, on the contrary, 
that instead of making such a fallible concession 
the ground of a divine faith, the partizans of an 
infallible Church would find in its source proof 
positive of its falsehood, draw from it just the 
opposite conclusions, and warn the world against 
placing any confidence in it: and the malignancy 
of the anathema involved in the exclusive claims 
of her community to salvation, might be deemed 



154 PERILS OF POPERY. 

a sufficient antidote to its success with the least 
discerning minds, had not sad experience taught 
very differently. 

We are not left on this point to mere abstract 
argumentation. The times we live in one would 
think sufficient to dissipate the illusion that the 
Protestant community is invulnerable to Popery. 
What imposture is too gross, what fanaticism too 
wild in modern times, to draw away its thousands 
or myriad votaries ! What an aspect Christen- 
dom presents to the observant spectator ! How 
deeply, how painfully, how awfully interesting ! 
Error, hundred-handed, is stalking forth over the 
Christian world. Protean error, in its varied 
shapes, assuming new and reviving its old forms 
^— now transformed into wild fanaticism, now in- 
to bare-faced imposture, and anon into new modi- 
fications of the great Papal apostacy — is aiming to 
assimilate the world to itself. It busies itself to 
suit all tastes and classes of society with its altars, 
regardless of the forms so the essence is preserved. 
Its most ridiculous forms attract their myriad wor- 
shippers, and human reason is caricatured in the 
person of humanity in our enlightened era. The 
Irving fanaticism in England is infinitely exceeded 
by the Mormon imposture in the United States : 
and how singular the success of the latter even to 



PERILS OF POPERY. 155 

foreign shores ! The wild notions of a recent 
visionary, upon which have been more recently 
grafted old exploded dogmas of error, have shaken 
the whole country with excitement. And Popery, 
with seductive airs, aiming at the supremacy in 
this country, nor altogether fruitlessly, in a hardly 
protestantized exterior at the other side the At- 
lantic, has infected and proselyted a great part of 
the clergy of the Anglican establishment, and 
been tamely submitted to by large bodies of its 
members till the contempt of the intelligent and 
the good of that nation is turned into consterna- 
tion. We have seen that a British prelate to 
check its influence has had to deliver and publish 
a Charge against these errors. Thence it has ex- 
tended east and west, till the Bishop of Calcutta, 
and the Episcopalian Bishop of our own State, 
have found it necessary, even in these distant 
climes, to guard their clergy against them. If 
the revival of Popish tenets by aspiring founders 
of new sects are attended with such triumphs at 
home and abroad, what may not the great mother 
of abominations herself, aided as she is by the 
pseudo-Protestants, accomplish in the future ? 
And they are not a few among us who are be- 
guiled by the sophistry and shallow pretences of 
Popery, not only into the belief that she is per- 



156 PERILS OF POPERY. 

fectly inoffensive, but actually into high admira- 
tion of her virtues. Surely they are well pre- 
pared to be deluded next into the belief of transub- 
stantiation, saint worship, purgatory, prayers for 
the dead, and other Popish rites and tenets, none 
of which, perhaps, is opposed by stronger evi- 
dence than disproves the position, that Popery is 
congenial to the institutions of civil and religious 
liberty. 

The great religious contest of our age is be- 
tween formalism and evangelism. Under these 
denominations air the sects are ranged; and in 
the van of the former Popery leads. We know 
that outward and adventitious things have more 
to do in deciding the religious preference of those 
who have no purely religious sentiments than 
the distinguishing principles of churches. Rome 
knows this too, and she acts upon it. Her clergy 
hope to strike the senses of the multitude with 
the pomp and splendor of her rites and ceremo- 
nies ; to attract to her altars, by the glare of the 
learning and refinement of her priests, the literary 
and vain ; and to win the affections of the fashion- 
able and the gay as she advances in popularity. 
Whatever, therefore, tends to strengthen and pro- 
mote the reign of formalism, is serviceable to the 
interests of Rome and favorable to her success ; 



PERILS OP POPERY. 157 

since it is calculated to break down prejudices 
and create sympathy with her. 

The semi-Popish sects are indeed preparing the 
way for the success of Popery, and are likely to 
be ultimately swallowed up in her ; since the 
tendency of the human mind in error, like its ten- 
dency in truth, is from lesser to greater, and from 
partial to total. It would seem as if only the torch 
need to be applied to the combustible in them to 
blow them into atoms — to scatter all that distin- 
guishes them from Popery to the winds. Besides, 
there is in the human mind a tendency to supersti- 
tion, which has distinguished it in all ages, and to 
which the possession of vital religion is the only 
sure antidote. By superstition we mean all those 
notions of a spurious religion, in general, which 
attach to peculiar positive rites that efficacy which 
only belongs to moral conformity to the will of 
God, and supposes their observance to be equiva- 
lent to it. Of all the forms of superstition Popery 
is the worst ; since it has combined all that is 
most ruinous to the spiritual and temporal wel- 
fare of man with all that is calculated to captivate 
the senses and dazzle the imagination. The bulk 
of mankind will have some form of religion. 
This is, perhaps, the grand distinguishing charac- 
teristic of our race, man's great peculiar amid the 



158 PERILS OF POPERY. 

varied forms of life and being by which he is 
surrounded. It is the instinct of his nature — an 
almost overwhelming power prompts him to de- 
votion and religious exercises. Hence the im- 
portance of possessing true religion, the pearl of 
great price : it fills the void, it occupies the space 
which superstition would usurp ; and not only 
arms us against it, but enlists and equips us for 
aggressive warfare, and makes it our indispensa- 
ble duty to oppose it. But the great multitude, 
who cling to the form of godliness whilst they 
deny its power, are vulnerable to superstition 
as these are proof against it ; and the same spirit 
and moral dispositions which contents them with 
the mere semblance and outward show of religion, 
creates a tendency to embrace that form which 
possesses the greatest exterior splendor, and is 
best adapted to strike the imagination and the 
senses. None delighted more to gaze upon the 
garnished and highly decorated tombs of the mar- 
tyred prophets and righteous men, as the Saviour 
informed the Jews, than those among them who 
inherited the murderous spirit of their fathers, 
who had imbrued their hands in their blood. 
The splendor of the tomb is in amends for the 
rottenness within ; and when men will bow at 
the shrine of a mere formalism, it is natural to 



PERILS OF POPERY. 159 

expect them to surround that carcass whose 
sepulchre is most majestic and most imposing. 
These advantages incontestibly belong supremely 
to the Church of Rome. 

As on the one hand the transition from super- 
stition to Popery is natural and easy, so on the 
other scepticism and irreligion, as they may be its 
offspring, may in turn become a main source of 
its success. In proportion to the prevalence of 
irreligion is the danger from this source ; for if 
true religion be the only antidote to superstition, 
(which we have discovered,) then it necessarily 
follows that the more irreligious, according to the 
true rule of religious character, an individual or a 
nation is, the more exposed they are to the influ- 
ence of superstition, or that species of religion 
which would insure to the observance of mere 
outward rites and ceremonies the rewards of vir- 
tue and piety, which it proposes in lieu of them. 
As it is the purpose of superstition to blend the 
extremes of impiety and the most rigorous sanc- 
tity, to combine the rewards of virtue with the 
demerit of vice and profanity, (elements, by the 
way, essential to its success,) it must ever be most 
agreeable to the human mind in proportion to its 
enmity to moral purity or holiness. The ancient 
world was never more superstitious than when it 



160 PERILS OF POPERY. 

was most impious ; and should a nation fly to the 
awful extreme of universal scepticism and profli- 
gacy, it would doubtless soon subside into the 
opposite extreme of profound superstition. Since 
the bulk of mankind at least will follow the pro- 
pensity of their nature to adopt some form of re- 
ligion, a spurious if not the genuine form, such 
must be the result. Had the modern revolution- 
ary atheists been permitted to protract and carry 
out their disastrous experiment, it would doubt- 
less have shed new light upon this propensity of 
our nature, and evinced that society could not 
long exist without some form of religious devo- 
tion. JNor are the leaders of political parties 
likely to be the last to fall in with, the growing or 
prevailing superstition. They will be prompted 
by good policy, if not by piety, to do homage to 
the superstition, by embracing its forms or paying 
court to its leaders. In proportion then to the ex- 
tent of practical and speculative impiety, and to 
the growing importance of the superstition for 
political purposes, is our danger from Popery. 

Two concurrent causes in operation create an 
awful possibility of an unimagined and unexam- 
pled success of Popery in our country : Extreme 
ignorance of the system and as to the character 
of its agents on the part of a large proportion of 



PERILS OF POPERY. 161 

its citizens, and unwearied assiduity, with the 
utmost vigor of effort, on the part of the Papal 
clergy. A large proportion of the priests among 
us are undoubtedly Jesuits, and they have here 
already several institutions for the training of this 
order. Under these refined sophists and masters 
of policy, Popery is succeeding in fact in this 
country. They are aiming to engross, as they had 
done before the expiration of the sixteenth cen- 
tury in every Papal country in Europe, the edu- 
cational direction of the youth in this. Through- 
out the Mississippi .Valley their institutions of 
learning are sustained mainly by Protestant fami- 
lies, who are thus deriving their educational nour- 
ishment, and receiving a bias for life, at the viti- 
ating breasts of this hideous monster, disguised 
by exterior glare and show. This is a grand stroke 
of policy ! Many of their churches throughout 
the Middle and Western States are built, and 
others erecting in reliance on Protestants to fill 
them : nor are they slow in affording assistance 
for their erection. These proselyting movements 
are not to be in vain. They are tilling, and will 
yet tell loudly on our Protestant community. 
They have already removed the prejudices and 
conciliated the favor of multitudes of our respect- 
able and influential fellow-citizens; and, believe 



162 PERILS OF POPERY. 

me,. this is the first step to the consummation they 
desire. In this Church, whose motto has always 
been that popular ignorance is the mother of 
popular devotion, they see nothing but the true 
friend and patron of learning ! In this leaven 
principle of the worst despotisms of Europe, they 
see only the friend, and ally, and admirer of 
republican institutions in America ! 

Time, whose keen tooth scarce aught earthly 
escapes, has been insensibly wearing away the 
asperity of Protestant prejudice and animosity 
against Popery ; the history of its enormities be- 
gins to fall upon Protestant ears like tales of ro- 
mance, too unearthly and inhuman ever to have 
been realized ; the horrid tragedies of its reign, 
which under almost any circumstances might ex- 
cuse incredulity, are rendered questionable by dis- 
tance, which diminishes evidence ; we at least 
are disposed to hope that the system has under- 
gone some radical melioration or improvement, 
an error into which even a mistaken spirit of 
Christian charity may lead us ; at all events we 
console ourselves the danger is distant; and a 
spirit of anlipathy and maddened retaliation has 
been displaced by compassion and sympathy for 
an humbled foe. 

Besides, it has usually been the error of txs&j 



PERILS OF POPERY. 163 

or rather, to speak less paradoxically, of its vota- 
ries, that relying on its natural omnipotence and 
immortality, and confounding the weakness and 
susceptibility of the human mind with its mighti- 
ness and impassiveness, they have been wanting 
in vigilance and precaution against the assaults of 
sophistry and error. Error, on the contrary, is 
always suspicious of danger, and watchful as the 
spider at every breath to strengthen its flimsy 
web, and to retain its victims. And often in pro- 
portion to the magnitude of the error and the 
madness of its votaries, is the contempt and 
supineness of the friends of truth ; as if madmen 
and maniacs were not to be feared, a lawless 
banditti could effect no injury in society, or there 
was no susceptibility in mankind to errors of mon- 
strous shape and midnight hue. This proneness 
of the friends of truth, this confidence in its suc- 
cess and its maintainancy of its own ground, is 
highly dangerous to the cause. We leave it to 
secure itself till it is banished. It is a keen edged 
sword, but it needs to be wielded. Instead of 
following the ordinary rule by guarding the trea- 
sure in proportion to its value, we are liable here 
to reverse it. Into this dangerous errror Protest- 
ants, confident in the truth of their system, are 
fallen : and they are confirmed in their mistake by 



164 PERILS OF POPERY. 

the modern aspects of Popery, failing to perceive 
that it is the times that are changed, not the sys- 
tem ; that it is ability that is wanting, and not the 
disposition of ancient Popery ; and that policy 
rather than piety is at the bottom of its friendly 
airs, as the assassin conceals the dagger he seeks 
opportunity to plunge into the vitals of his unsus- 
pecting victim. 

EMIGRATION. 

But the danger of this country is not chiefly 
from proselytation, though not all invulnerable at 
this point. It is from emigration, which gives 
it a peculiar adaptation to the Papal design, — 
emigration which, like the irruption of the 
North upon Italy, threatens to pour a flood of 
darkness over this mighty continent. 

The framers of our government did not take 
their observation from the critical point of time 
which we occupy ; the crisis had not arrived so 
threatening to our experiment of popular self- 
government ; they were not endowed with that 
scope of vision whereby they could anticipate the 
perilous times which have come upon us; per- 
haps none of them had analyzed the nature, or 
discovered the inherent malignity of the Papal 
system, and deceived by the quietude of Rome 



PERILS OF POPERY. 165 

and its partizans, imagined that that spirit which 
had dyed its previous history in blood, and dis- 
tinguished its universal career by an indomitable 
ambition, was departed. And in their arrange- 
ments for its future government and its perpetuity 
they but provided against the evils they foresaw, 
and threw up no guards or fortifications for pro- 
tection against elements of evil they neither ima- 
gined or suspected. 

" The extension of our civil and social blessings 
to the oppressed of all nations who might seek 
an asylum on our shores, was a provision alike 
wise and generous; but it was not made with 
the expectation of millions, speaking other lan- 
guages, ignorant of the institutions and laws that 
gave them shelter, unqualified for the enjoyment 
of rights so easily secured and so little prized, 
would swarm forth from the crowded states of 
the old world, < when not needed for their armies 
and navies/ to endanger the liberties of the New 
World. Perfect freedom of conscience was 
another inalienable right, recognized in our char- 
ter of liberty, and by it secured to all who dwell 
in our land : but the prospect then seemed remote 
of such a provision being made the cover under 
which a system of spiritual despotism — in its in- 
herent nature and universal history opposed to 

N 



166 PERILS OP POPERY. 

the very principle by which it is protected — now 
and always denying its subjects the right of pri- 
vate judgment in matters of faith — should seek, 
by the lavish expenditure of means drawn from 
the coffers of royalty and the skilful disposition 
of a Jesuit force schooled in the intriguing diplo- 
macy of Europe, to lay broad and deep such 
foundations of error as never did and never can 
so exist within a society like ours." 

The Crusades, protracted through successive 
ages, which superstition excited for the recovery 
of the land of Palestine from the infidel nations, 
when " all Europe, torn from its foundations, 
seemed ready to precipitate itself in one united 
body upon Asia," is. a fearful comment on the 
danger of America from the frantic zeal of Popish 
bigotry. The same spirit of enterprize, emana- 
ting from Popish zealotry, when excited from its 
apathy by the bold and magnificent design of 
the Papal court, may take its direction to our 
open shores, on which we have hitherto gene- 
rously stood, holding out the welcome hand t6 
the alien, the foreigner, and the stranger, as it did 
once to the Holy Land. All the eyes of Papal Eu- 
rope will be turned, and concentred, and fastened 
upon America, if, indeed, their concentric gaze 
be not already fixed upon her. With the insti- 



PERILS OF POPERY. 167 

tutions of this country, Protestant Europe has 
little or no sympathy, and who can tell that all 
Europe is not now, or ere long will not be con- 
spired against her. America stands alone in the 
political world, at once its terror and its hope, its 
reprover and its admiration ! So must she ever 
stand whilst the genius of her government and of 
theirs remain the same. 

Were our contest merely with Popery in 
our midst, then we might regard its effects with 
pity or with scorn rather than with apprehension 
and fear. It is not, however. It is with the 
great Papal empire — with the Pope, and his more 
than one hundred millions of subjects : an em- 
pire, the resources of which, from its peculiar 
structure, he can wield and concentrate with a 
marvelous dexterity. Popery among us is but 
the channel through which the wealth and influ- 
ence of papal Europe is to flow, ever widening 
by emigration, procreation, and proselytation, till 
the accumulating torrent|of Papal influence, dis- 
daining its narrow channel, whelms the whole 
country. 

Is not the grand crusade commenced already? 
May it share the defeat of the past crusades ! 
What mean those powerful associations in Eu- 
rope for the propagation of Popery here — in the 



168 PERILS OF POPERY. 

city of Lyons — in Austria, headed by Prince 
JVletternich — and that gigantic scheme set on foot 
of late in Great Britain, speedily to distend the 
basis of the power and influence of Popery, by 
transporting whole colonies of Papists to our 
Western States. How far the enterprise of 
the Popish world is worked up it is impossible 
to say; and the time may be at hand when 
Europe once more unsettled from its basis, shall 
seem ready to bound, not upon Asia, but upon 
America. The floodgates of emigration are up- 
lifted, and who shall ever dare to whisper — let 
them down ? Judging from present appearances 
it is most probable that we shall continue to look 
on with a heightening, but unavailing surprise 
and anxiety, till we must behold with anguish 
an evil it is too late to correct; till the extin- 
guishment of the fire raging within attracts our 
attention and calls off our energies from the 
circle which involves us ; till the power of the 
internal enemy shall, maugre our alarmed flutter- 
ings, keep the gates wide open to the besieging 
hosts without, who haste to enter. 

No other country on the face of the globe is 
exposed at this quarter as ours. Its vast and 
uncultivated wildernesses invite the stranger and 
the foreigner to seek a settlement among us. If 



PERILS OF POPERY. 169 

oppression reigns in European countries over 
any part of their citizens, the perfect tolerance 
of ours affords them an asylum. The superior 
enterprise of our people and peculiar resources of 
our country, hold out inducements to those in 
other lands who have no prospects there of com- 
petency or comfort, to mount with us the revolv- 
ing wheel of fortune in this. Here all the ele- 
ments of human prosperity are more rich and 
rife than in any other country. In this country 
they need not fear, as in England and Ireland, 
the want of bread, and may recover their ener- 
gies, paralyzed by poverty and the despair of 
bettering their conditions ; and, unlike the pea- 
santry of France, Austria, Prussia, Poland, Tur- 
key, and Italy, the dwellers in the cottages of our 
country, are themselves the lords of the soil, each 
under his own vine and fig tree. This is the field 
which invites their ever-increasing surplus popu- 
lations. As the subjects of the Pope are every- 
where in Europe the most miserable victims of 
poverty and oppression, an effect naturally re- 
sulting from the spirit-crushing genius of their 
religion, even where there are no extraneous 
causes, the greatest masses of emigration to this 
country are composed, as might be expected, of 
them. Hence America is the proper theatre to 



170 PERILS OF POPERY. 

be selected by the Romish Church for the execu- 
tion of her bold design. Here the Pope may 
concentrate the energies and resources of his 
mighty empire, and a theatre on which to con- 
centrate his power is all he asks or needs. 

But besides, the late political attitude assumed 
by this organized body, under the enslaving in- 
fluence of a priesthood organized into a kind of 
individuality of interest, and feeling, and action, 
in the East ; their bold encroachment upon the 
educational system there, and advancing argu- 
ments which assume that there are fundamental 
and irreconcilable differences between their prin- 
ciples and those on which our social and political 
institutions repose ; and the unison with which 
they act in every city, village, and township 
where they have arisen, or are arising into im- 
portance, open to the observation 'of every man 
conversant with their proceedings, utters a por- 
tentous voice, one might suppose sufficient to 
startle from their lethargy this entire nation, and 
to convince all who believe, or effect to believe 
them an altered people, that the same spirit of 
ambition, innovation, and intolerance, pervades 
their community in our day as in olden time. 

If the evidence of the Papal design upon our 
liberties were less strikingly marked, it were not 



PERILS OF POPERY. 171 

thence to be concluded that our institutions are 
not in jeopardy, and that the fatal train is not 
laid or laying, destined to effect the disastrous 
explosion contemplated. Like that submarine 
ephemera, feeble and contemptible though it ap- 
pears, which toils through its countless genera- 
tions unobserved, till often suddenly its coral 
creations emerge from their native deep, new 
continents and kingdoms ; — so the emissaries of 
the Roman See, perfectly organized, wedded to 
the holy mother, (inapposite name,) and self- 
sacrificing to her interests, patiently endure the 
continuous toil of ages, often unobserved and 
little suspected in their designs, till the last tragic 
scene of the grand drama is ready to be acted, 
when the curtain of secrecy is suddenly uplifted. 

Not to have formed such a design, and to be 
attempting it with a bold and vigorous execution 
under all the circumstances, would be a rare in- 
stance of apathy and stupidity in Rome. A de- 
sign upon our liberties, with even the least pro- 
bability of success, is what it would be natural to 
expect in such a sworn foe to the rights of con- 
science and of man — exactly what we would in- 
fer from its principles and anticipate from their 
past operation ; and one might suppose that such 
would be our horror and dread of its ascendancy 



172 PERILS OF POPERY. 

that even dubious developements of the forma- 
tion of a design, beginning to be carried out/i^. 
systematic operation, with a bare possibility of 
success, would be sufficient to startle from their 
lethargy a nation of freemen, whose conduct 
should be a ceaseless exposition of the motto — 
u Eternal Vigilance." 

Can we linger a moment longer in doubt of the 
reality of this design ? To test this question let 
a demand be made upon the Pontiff of Rome to 
permit exertions on the part of Protestant Chris- 
tendom in his dominions equivalent to those 
which Papal Christendom is pressing among us — 
let us ask of him the reasonable return of our 
civility, and Christian charity and tolerance; and 
then, if we succeed in this just request; if the 
throne of infallibility does not frown down its 
own darkness upon us ; if an air of supercilious 
and haughty contempt does not accompany an 
indignant repulse, a stern refusal and severe 
rebuke, let us continue to question his evil inten- 
tions upon our country : but if, on the contrary, 
we fail, let the scales fall from our eyes, and let 
us bethink ourselves that he who is ready to 
take a liberty with others he is unwilling to grant 
in turn, is not to be trusted, — he is not merely 
guilty of meanness, but of knavery ; for he is al- 



PERILS OF POPERY. 173 

ready found trespassing his own sense and stand- 
ard of propriety and of right. I fancy the reader 
is startled, at least smiles at the idea of the Pope's 
dominions being thrown open to the Protestant 
clergy of America, and the efforts, the wealth, 
the combined energies of Protestant Christen- 
dom ; turned by him into a war-theatre at their 
instance ; they permitted to erect churches and 
seminaries of learning, to scatter bibles all over 
the land — and of a universal toleration being 
proclaimed throughout the dominions of the sove- 
reign Pontiff. Well may the reader smile at so 
preposterous an idea. The experiment needs not 
to be tried : the whole world knows what recep- 
tion such a project would meet at Rome (See 

Appendxi.) 

political associations. 

The times are but too pregnant with intima- 
tions that this system of legerdemain is conspir- 
ing with the European despotisms to subvert the 
liberties of this nation, confessedly so perilous, 
and so evil in its aspects upon their authority. 
The Pope aspires to erect his Popedom in our 
midst, and they would employ him as the fit in- 
strument to effect a purpose fraught with such 
infinite advantage to themselves. Upon a spiri- 
o 



174 PERILS OF POPERY. 

tu.al empire over more than one hundred millions 
of souls, why should he not, aided by the kings of 
the earth, aspire to establish a temporal supremacy 
over this mighty hemisphere. The signs are 
unequivocal of such an enterprise. The philo- 
sophy of Schlegel may be rife with ruin to the 
world. Think you that the motive which wrings 
the hard earnings of the European poor to erect 
splendid edifices of worship and institutions of 
learning in this country ; that stimulates them to 
the attainment of a high educational ascendancy 
at so much cost, with such energy and perseve- 
rance, is altogether pure; that it augurs nothing 
of the array of a Fopish world against our insti- 
tutions, confessedly so formidable and so perilous 
in their influence to the genius of its governments. 
Whence — we press the question — whence the in- 
terest manifested by the European kings and 
nobles in this republican country — their excited 
concern for its literary culture — their lavish dona- 
tions for the propagation and support of the Papal 
system amongst us ? Does all this proceed from 
pure disinterestedness and generosity ? If their 
real motive is not ulterior to their pretended de- 
signs, why not appropriate those squandered 
sums to the promotion of their home interests ? 
Has selfishness in these powers so soon been 



PERILS OF POPERY. 175 

swallowed up in an unbounded philanthrophy ? 
Think so who can, with the evidence of univer- 
sal history before them. Or, we ask, have our 
institutions, most perfectly uncongenial and, in 
their influence, subversive of theirs, become all 
at once objects of such strong and devoted attach- 
ment, — that they should all conspire to pour their 
bountiful and munificent charities into the lap of 
a Protestant nation, to the neglect of their own 
needy and impoverished realms? They know 
the utility of keeping the motto, as well as we, 
that " charity begins at home ;" and were it 
not to advance some ulterior sinister interest of 
the family compact, their own present interests 
would not be abandoned in taking care of us. 
Be assured America in her present form of 
government is no more the universal favorite of 
the European powers now, than the Protestants 
of France were the pets of its government, 
which lavished its favors and elevations upon 
them so bountifully, previous to the disastrous 
night of the festivities to the honor of St. Bar- 
tholomew. 

It is to be feared that the sentiments of the 
famous Frederic Schlegel, under the auspices of 
Prince Metternich, (that*prime friend of despotism 
and of Popery ;) the author of his model of empire, 



176 PERILS OF POPERY. 

a member of his cabinet, and his confidential 
counsellor and adviser, are operating like leaven 
in the ruling powers of Europe, and assimilating 
the whole mass to itself. This man, reputed 
great, but in error, and one of the most distin- 
guished literary men in Europe, about seventeen 
years ago (1828,) " delivered lectures at Vienna, 
on the Philosophy of History, a great object of 
which is to shew the mutual support which Po- 
pery and monarchy derived from each other. 
He commends the two systems in connection as 
deserving of universal reception. He attempts 
to prove that the arts and sciences, and all the 
pursuits of man, as an intellectual being, are pro- 
moted under the perfect system of Church and 
State : a Pope at the head of the former, an em- 
peror at the head of the latter. He contrasts 
with this the system of Protestantism ; represents 
Protestantism as the enemy of good government, 
as the ally of Republicanism, as the parent of the 
distresses of Europe, as the cause of all the dis- 
orders with which legitimate governments are 
afflicted. In the close of his lectures, he speaks 
thus of this country : < The true nursery of all 
these destructive principles, the revolutionary 
school for France and the rest of Europe, has 
been North America. Thence the evil has spread 



PERILS OP POPERY. 

over many other lands, either by natural c/rc- 
tagion, or by arbitrary communication? "* s/ich 
is the light in which our institutions are viewed 
in European countries ; and it is true jhat 
Popery and despotism, the forms of liberal go- 
vernment and Protestantism, are associated in 
history and coalesce in principle. 

These are the principles of the man, whose 
policy and opinions opened the way for Austrian 
efforts on the foundation of St. Leopold's to add 
America to the Pope's dominions: an institution 
erected for the express and exclusive purpose 
of advancing the propagation and influence of 
Popery here. Its source then is prifna facie 
evidence of the object of this institution. These 
patrons and friends of Popery hope, " so soon as 
it gains the fulcrum of popular opinion, and the 
lever of the majority" by its chamelion-like mu- 
tations, to build up the beau-ideal of the Aus- 
trian prince in America. Even England herself 
may be implicated in a measure in the plot; it 
is hard to conjecture how deeply. The late revo- 
lution in her national establishment, taken together 
with the insidious warfare of the government 
upon dissenters; and its bold but disastrous en- 

* Lecture 17, vol. ii, p. 286. The above extract is from 
Beecher. 



178 PERILS OF POPERY. 

coachment upon the Church of Scotland (and 
fc long connivance as far as expediency would 
permit of the noon-day heresy by the dignitaries 
of Vie Church ought not to be forgotten;) are evi- 
defce of a more than merely religious movement 
The Puseyite movement, (which we have seen, 
is of relapse into the arms of Popery) may be a 
, plot intended to subvert the degree of civil and 
religious liberty the British people at present en- 
joy — an expedient to bolster up a falling secular 
Church, though at the sacrifice of its sacred prin- 
ciples; to raise up, by the avowal of Popish tenets; 
a distinction between the doctrines and rites of 
the Establishment and the dissenting bodies; to 
engraft upon the establishment the intolerance of 
Popery; and thus to quell the political agitations 
and excitements, and movements towards reform 
to which the empire is subjected from the diffu- 
sion of knowledge and liberal sentiments by Pro- 
testantism, and the influence of Ptepublican Ame- 
rica. If those in whose hands is the administra- 
tion of the British government, are not disposed 
to give a favorable response to the popular de- 
mand for reform of Church and State, the rulers 
of both judge rightly, if they deem a return to 
Popery absolutely necessary to secure the per- 
manency and peace of the government with its 



PERILS OF POPERY. 17! 

abuses. Could they but evoke the ignorance and 
superstitions of P.opery on the empire again, t|fe/ 
might perhaps succeed in maintaining the oppres- 
sive evils of their institutions. 

The true issue in this contest is, of Pcpish 
error and superstition — basis of monarchy ; and 
of Protestantism as the basis of popular and en- 
lightened government. The powers of Europe 
seem disposed to seize the former horn of the 
dilemma, uneasy of the restraints imposed upon 
them by an enlightened public opinion, and tl & 
demand for the reform of corruptions and abuses 
only sanctified by antiquity, they are unwilling 
to grant. T*hey think it preferable to risk the 
government of the people in the hands of a hired 
and venal priesthood, however dangerous the 
experiment, in hopes that they may be able to 
rule the priests, than that the people, assuming 
their natural sovereignty, should over-awe them, 
and they be held responsible at the tribunal of 
public opinion. The signs are unequivocal that 
this is the policy of consolidated Europe ; and 
that the Protestant with the Papal powers, if 
they do not conspire together to effect, would 
exult over the downfall of Republican North 
America. 

If we are not mistaken in these views (and 



180 PERILS OF POPERY. 

God grant we may !) our conflict may be with a 
varring world. For this sublime contest — the 
st fylimest should it occur ever acted on the theatre 
°f time — let us prepare : and when that time 
' a n^es let us act with a promptitude and vigor 
sorthg with the magnificent destinies, the des- 
tinies of a world, pending on our fortune. If 
irotestantism and liberty flee to this sacred tem- 
ple for refuge from their pursuers, intent on their 
banishment from earth — shall they, oh shall they 
ke dragged from the horns of its altar ! 

In the history of party collisions in this coun- 
try have already been witnessed the intoxication 
of political excitement and the recklessness of 
party zeal. It is easy to conceive that taking 
advantage of such violent paroxysms, as the Po- 
pish party advances in the scale of importance, it 
may enter into combination with powerful parties, 
and thus attain to an ascendancy at which there 
will be no power left sufficient to check its ambi- 
tious strides. The stone that on the mountain 
top, and even after its revolvings first begin, may 
easily be checked, after it has gained a quickened 
velocity defies the power of resistance, and goes 
on, rolling, and bounding, and leveling opposi- 
tion ; while they who might readily have checked 
it are left the single alternative, either to be crush- 



PERILS OP POPERY. 181 

ed in its career or get out of its way, to look on 
at the destruction it is too late to remedy. 

We need not look forward for the period when 
the unnaturalized agents of the foreign despot 
shall boast of holding the balance of political 
power, and marshal their ignorant and subser- 
vient hosts, impelled by foreign sympathy, under 
a religious party flag, to subserve the interests of 
Rome. The time is arrived already. We have 
seen the favor of that party courted, or its retali- 
ation dreaded, by the secular press, in advancing 
their claims upon our Protestant community, and 
in its silence during their late aggression .on the 
school department in one. quarter of the land, not- 
withstanding their bold avowal therein of prin- 
ciples antagonist to those which form the basis of 
our institutions. It is the case with most party 
politicians, as well as the error of a majority of 
mankind, that they are disposed to merge all con- 
siderations of the future in the oblivion of the 
present interest; to look no farther into futurity 
than to the issue of the present emergency ; to 
sell a future kingdom for the gratification of a 
present triumph. 

Nor are ambitious demagogues likely to be 
wanting in the future history of this country, as 
they never have been wanting ill any country, 



182 PERILS OF POPERY. 

who, desperado-like, for their subsidy in the elec- 
tive scale/ will be ready to sell their country, and 
become the willing tools of a foreigner combining 
political and ecclesiastical despotism, to gain their 
mercenary ends and gratify their lust for power. 
There are in influence in every government men 
of second-rate ambition and sordid principles, 
who would gladly wield a dependent influence ; 
men who would not start at the idea of ruining a 
world, so that self might be advanced to enthrone- 
ment upon its ruins; who, to chastise public neg- 
lect, or avenge private wrongs, would visit upon 
their country the maddened retaliation of their 
wounded vanity. There is, too, a species of am- 
bition which, unsupported by the associate attri- 
butes of greatness, and unable to aspire to the 
glory of a master-builder, would at least perpetu- 
ate its name, like the incendiary of ill-fame who 
destroyed the ancient temple by virtue of the 
torch of destruction. Where so many nations 
have fallen victims to slavery by the parricidal 
hands of their own children, it is not for us to re- 
pose implicit confidence in the universal and in- 
vulnerable patriotism of our countrymen. Be 
assured the time is at hand ! What Rome may 
not be able to effect by open violence she may 
by covert bribery and corruption. 



PERILS OP POPERY. 183 

When reduced to the single alternative to be 
the despot or the slave, what man of wordly am- 
bition will not strive for the ascendency ? Re- 
duced to this alternative even patriots may so- 
phisticate despotism into virtue. Necessity, says 
the popular axiom, has no law; and self-preserva- 
tion is the first law of nature. Times there were 
in Roman history when her ruling spirits were 
involved in this dilemma. If ignorance and corrup- 
tion over-spread our nation, and factious dema- 
gogues gain the control of powerful and violent 
parties, even patriots may aspire to become 
tyrant-slaves, by base compliance with the ensla- 
ving conditions of Popish influence, to secure its 
patronage. They would doubtless exculpate their 
conduct by pleading that they only choose a les- 
ser for a greater evil ; when for them to have de- 
clined the despot's throne had only filled it with a 
worse tyrant. . 

We will barely allude, in this connection, (for 
to allude is sufficient,) to the proximity of Papal 
Canada and Mexico ; both ready, so soon as the 
Papal faction shall feel themselves justified to 
strike in this country, to back and follow up the 
blow. Any calculation, then, that leaves the in- 
fluence of these proximate countries out of the 
question, is an inadequate estimate of the real 



184 PERILS OP POPERY. 

Papal power in this nation — variously estimated 
at from five hundred thousand to two millions. 

Already we find the venom of party politics 
instilled into the Church, and operating with a 
malignant influence among her members. In the 
late presidential election this element of discord 
has evinced a rapid growth; it begins to threaten 
more serious consequences than formerly, and 
will probably ere long, if not arrested by the good 
sense of our people, leaven the whole lump. 
These contests are beginning to produce a peri- 
odical declension of religious and fraternal feeling 
among the membership, but, alas, too universal ! 
Should this symptom of disease in the Church go on 
as it has been doing, it may well be feared that 
the time is not far distant when the line of the 
great political parties will also become a great 
dividing line of churches ; that the sects will stand 
ranged on the sides of Whig and Democrat ; that 
this will be effected by the drawing off of that polit- 
ical denomination in each church which is far in 
the minority, from differences of political opinion 
between a large proportion of the ministry of any 
given church and any portion of its membership, 
and from other causes. The same spirit which 
has transformed the great question growing out 
of the peculiar institutions of the South into an 



PERILS OP POPERY. 185 

instrument of division, it is to be feared, will effect 
the evil we are deprecating; and perhaps, .twelve 
months ago, the idea that it would have assumed 
the fearful importance it now occupies in a numer- 
ous branch of our common Zion would have been 
started at as much as we fear will be the case with 
the sentiments we are here advancing ! In this 
event, (God forbid it should occur,) that party on 
whose side Popery shall range her hosts (and for 
aught we know it may prove the strongest) will 
open up new susceptibilities to its progress that 
may seal the destiny of our land and nation. A 
common sympathy, and common cause in the 
grand political contest, would in this case bury in 
oblivion all sense of religious difference, and create 
friendly dispositions and intercourse among the 
sects ranged on that hand; and Popery might 
ultimately devour them all up in her mighty vor- 
tex, and bring the embattled hosts to the general 
denominations of Popery and its friends on one 
hand, Protestantism and its friends on the other. 
The least that could be anticipated would be a 
division of Protestantism against herself; and the 
wisdom of the only infallible and unerring Teacher 
has long since decided that "a house divided 
against itself cannot stand." 
If it will not be thought too great a departure 



186 PERILS OF POPERY. 

from the present stage of our subject, permit me 
to ask, Why may we not differ on questions affect- 
ing the internal policy of our country without 
turning it into a vehicle of prejudice and bitter- 
ness in our churches? and why may we not dis- 
tinguish between these questions and that in- 
volved in the invasive aspects of Popery and the 
Popish powers upon our country? The latter 
will, sooner or later, be the all-important, the vital 
question. Let neither party enter into close alli- 
ance with Popery; throw out no overtures to con- 
ciliate or secure its balance of power; let both con- 
spire to hold up to public view our danger from 
this prime invasion of (what equally concerns all 
parties) our country ; and let the popular mind 
be so well instructed in that conspiracy against 
our liberties that a close and uniform alliance of 
Popery with either of the great parties will be 
considered paramount to a renunciation of every 
just pretension to patriotism, and all the true 
friends of liberty oblivionize for a time the lesser 
in the greater interest; and should they even be 
compelled, in order to this, to abandon the party 
flag of local policy, fly to the support of the great 
standard of common defence. 



PERILS OF POPERY. 187 



OUR INDIFFERENCE. 



The prevailing insensibility and lethargy of 
this nation in her imminent danger, is among the 
worst elements that augur the success of Rome. 
Would to God J were able to flatter myself that 
I am fighting phantoms! But I cannot. The 
visions of history crowd upon my memory. The 
revolutions and changes of fallen states and dy- 
nasties re-act before my imagination. The ele- 
ments of the wreck, as well as of the rise and 
greatness of states and governments, I see now 
insidiously operating, unfeared when they might 
have been checked and unsuspected, till beyond 
control, now developed in wide-wasting ruin and 
devastation. How often have the premonitions 
been disregarded, or slightly noticed, occasioned 
by the intestine commotions of the earth, when 
suddenly rent with the unexpected convulsive 
pang, the prostrative shock has stricken ruin 
through nations, and given birth to the all-en- 
tombing elements that agitated her inmost frame. 
If the faithful warnings of the trembling earth 
have been disregarded by her children, so may 
the prelusory intimations of the operating ele- 
ments of revolution by nations. From the past 



188 PERILS OF POPERY. 

issues a warning voice — a blended peal from its 
nations from the lips of history fails upon our 
ears, telling us to beware! 

I might tarry on this topic to trace the sudden 
collapses and explosions of both ancient and mod- 
ern kingdoms; to shew that causes less suspicious 
and less likely to produce the concussions and 
lapses of dynasties and kingdoms than those 
which imperil us have succeeded to universal 
surprise. Ah, ye heroes, and statesmen, and 
sages of former times, how little did ye imagine 
that the petty evils of your day, almost unnoticed 
and undeplored by you ; that hostile influences 
too trivial to excite your suspicion that they 
should ever become formidable; or that latent 
principles operating in mystery while you lived, 
should, so soon after your departures, subvert the 
institutions your hands erected or adorned, spoli- 
ate posterity of the wonders your valor had 
achieved, and confound the lessons of prudence 
your wisdom had taught — that what you im- 
agined would endure as the sun, and ages flow 
harmlessly past, should so soon be known, not as 
the standing monuments to your honor, but as 
the melancholy tale of desolation ! 

It will be needless, however, to burden our 
subject with numerous illustrations. A few re- 



PERILS OF POPERY. 189 

ferences will be sufficient, made to facts familiar 
to us all and to things transpiring around us. 

Perhaps it would not be a very difficult task to 
show, by an induction of particulars, that the 
mighty revolution which shook the Papal throne; 
that left it a shattered relic of what it once was, 
and brought about the Protestant Reformation, 
commenced with less probability and fewer obvi- 
ous contributory causes of success than those 
which seem to favor the designs of Rome. With 
what surprise did his Holiness behold the triumph 
of principles subversive of the established re- 
ligion -of Christendom through the instrumental- 
ity of an humble monk, aided as he advanced 
chiefly by a few undistinguished associates, whose 
operations in their first onset he regarded as too 
insignificant to attract his serious attention ! How 
perfectly confounded was the long unapprehen- 
sive Roman hierarchy at the glorious results of 
their at first unpromising efforts : when they saw 
nation after nation throw off the Papal yoke; and 
dissolve their connection with the Papal See, and 
Rome, hitherto supreme, humbled and degraded 
from her high and universal orbit of civil and 
ecclesiastical jurisdiction : Rome, supreme, the 
terror and the arbiter of kings and kingdoms 
crippled, her arm paralyzed, her mandates and 
p 



190 PERILS OF POPERY. 

anathemas disregarded as less than the idle blast; 
and she too impotent to resent in the chastise- 
ments of her awful vengeance the insults of her 
revolted subjects ! Had Pope Leo at an earlier 
period, in answer to the clamorous importunities 
of Luther's adversaries, and by sagacious fore- 
sight of the final importance of the incipient re- 
formation, fulminated his sentence of excommu- 
nication against the reformer, or taken active 
measures against the Reformation, he might, per- 
haps, and to all human probability would have 
crushed it in its first stages. But fortunately for 
the reformation cause, Luther was an object of 
Leo's contempt rather than of any fearful appre- 
hension. At an earlier period the Reformation 
might have been quashed by prompt and vigor- 
ous management: but now neither the famous 
Council of Trent, in session for eighteen succes- 
sive years; nor the Vatican's thunder-pealing 
anathemas and excommunications; nor the innu- 
merous schemes suggested for the overthrow of 
the reform cause ; nor the bloody and extermin- 
ating wars intended to accomplish its eradica- 
tion; nor the invincible armada, as it was vainly 
called ; nor the seven-fold heated furnace of the 
Inquisition ; nor the myriads of myriads of Pro- 
testant hecatombs immolated for the space of 



PERILS OP POPERY. 191 

thirty years without interruption, till the altars of 
persecution were almost submerged in the blood 
of saints — could avail to drive back the mighty 
tide of reformation which rolled onward and on- 
ward almost to the portals of the Vatican itself; 
engulfing the pride, and the pomp, and the power 
of mystic Babylon. 

If it be objected that we have been depicting 
the triumph of truth oyer error, and that, there- 
fore, the case is not in point; we turn to another 
sample in illustration, exhibiting the improbable 
triumph of error over truth— the modern success 
of Popery against Protestantism. This will be 
analogous. And, by the way, history is full of 
the variant fortunes of both truth and error, jus- 
tice and injustice. If truth thus succeeded, error 
may succeed. If Popery once triumphed over 
Christianity and obtained the mastery of the 
world, why should it be thought impossible that 
it should do so again ? And in a world where so 
many mighty nations have fallen we should not 
be confident, nor expect stability without pru- 
dence and exertion. 

Who- would have imagined, much less pre- 
dicted, when that pseudo-Protestant arch-Jesuit 
of Oxford began to broach his Popish heresies, 
that in the lapse of a few years such wouLd be 



192 PERILS OF POPERY. 

the result of his system of innovation upon the 
doctrines and institutions of the national Church 
of England — that about seven years should effect 
so improbable a change? None surely. Yet this 
more than fiction is realized. Now if in Eng- 
land, once the theatre of Popish persecution, and 
well experienced in the intolerance of its spirit — 
if in England, the sworn foe of Popery and sworn 
defender of Protestantism, the crown and the 
throne of whose sovereigns are constitutionally 
suspended on this condition — if in England, where 
the absurdities and superstitions of Popery have 
been more detested, because more unmasked and 
better understood than by us — if in England, 
where Protestant infants may almost, be said to 
have been born enemies to Popery ; where they 
have drawn from the maternal breast the nourish- 
ment of that hatred ; where education may be 
said to strengthen a natural prejudice and ren- 
der it almost invincible ; where fathers have been 
accustomed to extort from their sons, like the sire 
of tie renowned Carthagenian, an eternal enmity 
to this hated foe to Protestantism and to the rights 
of man; where the voice of the martyr-blood of 
their forefathers and blended peals from a con- 
tiguous continent mingling with it, clamorous for 
vengeance, is deafening to their ears; where Pa- 



PERILS OP POPERY. 193 

pist and rebel, priest and demon, Jesuit end vil- 
lian, Pope and devil, have been synonymous 
terms; and where all that is gloomy, and ail that 
is chilling, and all that is ghastly, and all that is 
sanguinary and base and hellish have been asso- 
ciated in the Protestant mind with the name of 
Popery — if, in a word, in Protestant England; in 
her splendid establishment, erected for the express 
purpose of preserving the nation for ever from 
Popish influence and errors, of disseminating the 
reformation principles, and protecting the religious 
and civil liberties of her people from Popish 
tyranny; if there and by that Church Popish 
principles are broached, Popish rites adopted, 
Popery in its naked -deformities caressed, Popish 
intolerance shaking her iron rod over every thing 
anti-Popish, what, I ask, is too wild next to con- 
jecture? Ought we to be composed and drink 
in the opiate of confident security? Is there not — 
we think it must appear to every candid mind 
that there is more probability now, that in a hun- 
dred years hence at least Popery will be ascend-, 
ant in this country, from all the elements con- 
ducing to that end, than there was eight years 
ago that by this time a large proportion of the 
British hierarchy should be essentially Papists,, 



194 PERILS OF POPERY. 

and yet officiating in the name of Protestant min- 
isters and divines. 

When we reflect, then, upon the tendency in 
mankind, not only in the ignorant and uninfluen- 
tial, but of the politic and great, to undervalue 
small encroachments— when we call to mind- 
what little beginnings have given the first impulse 
to some of the mightiest revolutions which have 
ever astonished and confounded the world — when 
we consider the evident design of the Roman 
hierarchy upon our country — when we see a 
cloud of elements at work conducing with all the 
celerity of time to the end proposed ; Popery 
gradually advancing in power and influence ; the 
tide of emigration, chiefly Popish, annually pour- 
ing in upon our shores; the inexhaustible re- 
sources of the Papal empire in numbers and 
wealth, arrayed against us; the powerful com- 
binations, political and religious, into which Po- 
pery may enter in the future history of this coun- 
try ; the aspect of a world upon our free institu- 
tions, and upon this contest; the aspiring and in- 
sidious character of the enemy we have to con- 
tend with; and the national mind unapprised of 
our imminent peril — when we bring together 
these considerations, while they revolve in our 
minds, do we not feel that it were madness to be 



PERILS OF POPERY. 195 

unalarmed, that it were folly to be silent any 
longer? I contrast the present numerical strength 
of Popery, her creations, her influence, and her 
attitudes with the mere name she was in this 
country but a very few years back; and then 1 
contrast her future prospects with her present 
condition in an annually progressive ratio; and, I 
confess, her probable destination appals me. 



196 



CHAPTER III. 

GENERAL PROSPECTS OF POPERY. 

England and America, like Mercury and Ve- 
nus from their proximity to the natural sun, enjoy 
the greatest constancy and fervor of the Sun of 
Righteousness; And despite the petty grudges 
and vulgar prejudices of their inferior spirits, they 
are united by sacred ties and sympathies, are 
elevated to peculiar honors and privileges, and 
associated together by Divine Providence in the 
great work of the religious and political regenera- 
tion of the world. Perhaps the political institu- 
tions of England are as far in advance of the sur- 
rounding despotisms of Europe, as America is in 
advance of her. It is an idea that sorts with the 
general administration of Providence, that to their 
agency in the religious regeneration of the world 
they owe their political elevation and influence. 
Should the dark cloud of Popish error and power, 
though small as yet, still impending in angry and 
doubtful mood, overspread them, these nations, 
now distinguished as the dispensers of religious 
light and civilization to the world, might exert an 



PERILS OF POPERY. 197 

influence as extensively malignant as it has been 
benign. Or perhaps God, who has elevated them 
above the nations of the earth to promote its civil- 
ization in connexion with its evangelization, they 
failing any longer to answer His purposes, would 
revoke the fiat to which they owe their greatness 
and transfer their glory to others. Their pros- 
perity blasted, their glory tarnished,^ and their 
power paralyzed, they would then sink down to a 
level, or perhaps beneath it, with their sister Popish 
nations, as the merited and exemplary punish- 
ment of the righteous Governor of the world; 
whose national retributions are evinced to be con- 
fined to time, as certainly as that individual re- 
wards and punishments ultimate in a future state 
of existence. 

What an accession to the power of the Roman 
Pontiff would be both or either of these nations ! 
How dangerous to the universal liberties of man- 
kind ! Thus the atheistic revolution in France 
not only threatened England with ruin, but was 
ominous of disasters to the world. Not more in- 
timate was the connection between these two 
countries than is that between the latter and 
America : and the improvements of the age have 
brought them into almost as near geographical 
proximity. The success of Popery in one quarter 
Q 



198 PERILS OF POPERY. 

of the world will affect it in another, not only by 
the confidence with which distant success would 
be calculated to inspire its agents and the equal 
despondency and consternation of its opposers, 
but also by various other influences which might 
be mentioned. But this is sufficient to allude to 
at present: to the terror of the conqueror's arms 
is to be attributed half his renown. What a tre- 
mendous influence would be exerted by such a 
nation as the British ! Thus the intelligent and 
far-seeing in our country feel something more 
than a mere Protestant sympathy in this contest; 
they feel as if something were at stake for them- 
selves, their nation and posterity. Equally fatal 
to England and to the world would be the Papal 
conquest of this nation, perha'ps more so ; for its 
political glory is only equalled by its religious 
freedom and the evangelical fire which distin- 
guishes its orthodox denominations. Here stand- 
ing aloof from the state, and depending wholly 
upon the voluntary principle for support, the 
Church is not only preserved from that tendency 
to corruption and formality which such alliances 
generate, but steadily rebukes all such anti-Chris- 
tian and fatal organizations. 

Under the benign auspices of these two nations 
a new era has risen upon the world. Its nations 



PERILS OF POPERY. 199 

are no longer like the scattered fragments of an 
exploded world. It is more like a body endued 
with living sympathies than a scene of disjointed 
or scattered parts or limbs. Nor do the seve- 
ral states, shut up within the narrow circles 
of their selfishness, and neither looking nor 
sympathizing boyond their own boundaries, pre- 
sent the aspects of so many worlds, sunless and 
centreless, unattractive and attractless. Protestant 
Christianity has called the chaos of worlds into a 
sort of order, and is marshalling like to the hosts 
of heaven. Like a sun she has arisen in their 
midst, drawing them towards herself and towards 
each other, yet so as not to produce collision, nor 
so as to encroach upon her own orbit or theirs. 
Her light is diffused abroad, and the rich fruits of 
universal science and the arts, and all the choice 
blessings of civilization, have been growing up 
luxuriantly under her genial influence, promoting 
peace and commerce among the nations of the 
earth. Her heat has thawed their frozen sympa- 
thies, and converted these icebergs into a mighty 
confluence. The world is at length assuming the 
appearance of a social compact — a grand system ; 
and its nations are at last beginning to resemble 
a family, acknowledging a common origin and 
fraternity, and adopting the great heaven-born 



200 PERILS OP POPERY. 

fundamental principles of justice and equity for 
their government. Its benign influence is felt 
even beyond where it shines out in its glory. It 
gleams upon some by reflection, as the sun through 
the moon and stars, "rich in borrowed lustre from 
a higher sphere ;" it is felt by others like the first 
dawnings of the new rising day, shooting athwart 
the horizon, ere the day-star has reached its verge. 
It is felt still more as it glows in meridian strength 
and splendor and with greatest constancy and fer- 
vor, but the influence is felt and pervasive of all. 
Shall yon gathering and portentous cloud wrap 
that sun in midnight ; and the scathing fires of 
Popory darting in thunderbolts from the dark- 
ened heavens, consume all this rising structure of 
excellence and glory? Shall our international law 
and Gospel of peace be exchanged for a peace 
tha,t can only be enjoyed by compliance with the 
enslaving conditions of the Papal hierarchy, and 
for the all-governing bulls of the Pope ? To either 
paganism has as good a claim as Popery. In her 
way to success stand these two nations; and her 
dark cloud, and her lurid fires, cannot blacken and 
blaze over the world till she has extinguished 
this sun of Christianity in their midst. Hence it 
is her policy to concentrate her strength upon 
these. Her main hope doubtless is America ; and 



PERILS OP POPERY. 201 

success in this might plant a lever under the Pro- 
testant world that would secure the overthrow of 
its institutions. 

Such, then, are the prospects of that system, 
now aspiring on the basis of a deep-laid and well- 
concocted plan, like the angel in the Apocalypse, 
to bestride land and sea, to set one foot upon the 
British throne and the other upon the Presiden- 
tial chair of these United States; and ready, over 
the ruins of these two nations which form the 
bulwark of the freedom and intelligence of the 
age in both hemispheres, to swear with his mouth 
of blasphemy that the principles and institutions 
of Protestantism shall exist no more on earth : a 
system whose imaginings and thoughts from its 
being the worst existing exhibition of fallen 
human nature are only evil and that continually; 
whose evils as developed in history are not merely 
extraneous or incidental, but whose spirit unquali- 
fiedly lusteth to cruelty and oppression. 

Should she succeed with them the world would 
find itself on the highway to certain ruin, mana- 
cled by superstition, and impelled forward to its 
awful destiny by her scorpion-scourge of terrors. 
The most sanguine may anticipate some con- 
juncture to arise (as conjunctures have arisen, 
for which Rome is always on the out-look,) in 



202 PERILS OP POPERY. 

which she would successfully contest the mastery 
with the princes, and seat herself upon her ancient 
throne of supreme despotism. The experiment 
may prove as fatal to them as it hitherto has been. 
When princes play cards with the Pope, they are 
always sure to be beat at last ; when they tamper 
with him they tamper with a grizly lion's paw — 
with a stroke at an unsuspecting hour it will 
crush them. The sword is too sharp for the scab- 
bard — it will cut its way through. If the poten- 
tates of the earth propose through the confrater- 
nity to rule the people, they will find the time to 
come when they will rule the princes through the 
people; when their thrones will totter beneath 
them at a bull from Rome, armed with that band 
of excommunication to enforce it, and that threat 
of absolution to their subjects, which would expose 
them to the rage of a populace inspired with a 
dangerous superstition. And yet strange to tell, 
this is evidently their short-sighted policy, as ap- 
pears from the obviously prevailing disposition of 
the rulers of the old world to strengthen the un- 
holy (as to them fatal) alliance of church and 
state, and the evidently retrogressive motion of 
toleration principles in their administration. — 
France too, is implicated in this charge. The 
Prussian king would erect a hierarchy after the 



PERILS OP POPERY. 203 

model of the British. And even her Brittannic 
majesty has become foster-mother to the bastard 
heresy of Oxford. They feel compelled no doubt 
to fly to this dernier resort to prop up their totter- 
ing systems of misrule. 

We have witnessed the impression already made 
upon the very bulwarks of Protestant Christen- 
dom — England and America — -a very considerable 
one indeed. In the former Puseyism, or more 
than semi-Popery, is rapidly on the advance 
and fostered in the bosom of the court, though 
vigorously resisted by the evangelical sects in 
that country ; and the regular Papal clergy are 
left to look on and chuckle at the zeal of these 
generous volunteers (though perhaps they have 
their pay !) in the service of their Church and of 
the Pope: in the latter that fearful apathy and 
indifference is witnessed which is the usual pre- 
curser of the doom of nations. But in neither, 
perhaps, are the efforts of the Protestant commu- 
nity at all ^commensurate with the greatness of 
the emergency and the imminency of the peril. 
Rome has then, added to all the rest, a resolution 
and zeal on her side that, supposing the parties in 
conflict stood on terms of perfect equality besides, 
would be vastly sufficient to turn the beam in her 



204 PERILS OP POPERY. 

favor, and that might alone compensate for very 
inferior advantages. 

We have passed reflections in another part of 
the work on the relationship between all the forms 
of superstition and the adaptation in Popery, like 
Moses' rod, to swallow them all up. We may add 
that one or two consequences is likely to be evolved 
from the acknowledged revolutionary movements 
among the Jews throughout the realms of pagan- 
ism and of Mohammedan imposture — the acces- 
sion of their power and influence to Protestant 
Christianity or to the Papal apostacy. There is a 
fearful possibility that it may be to the latter, and 
a fearful responsibility devolving on the Protestant 
world to prevent it. The powerful proselyting ef- 
forts on the part of Rome, of Jesuitical Popery, 
(its worst and modern form,) combined, in our 
calculations, with the consanguinity, so to speak, of 
all the forms of superstition, fanaticism and impos- 
ture, incur a fearful apprehension of the result. In 
the Church of Rome the Jew will find in conjunc- 
tion with the name of Christianity the semblance 
of Judaism — of the theocracy, the priesthood ; and 
all that exterior magnificence which, calculated to 
dazzle and strike the imagination and the senses, 
accommodates it to the peculiar prejudices of his 
education, and to the sensual religion of his fathers. 



PERILS OF POPERY. 205 

Nor is its adaptation to paganism and the reli- 
gion of the Mohammedans less perfect; since it 
excels them both in the sanguinary ambitions and 
sensual features of its character. Should the con- 
version of these grand divisions of the human 
family be in masses or nations, as is expected by 
many, is it not likely as not to stop short of the 
thorough regeneration of Protestant Christianity? 
and rest in a nominal conversion till another revo- 
lution effects a real change ? It is to be feared ; 
but may the effectual rallying of the Protestant 
world to enterprize and action, girt with the om- 
nipotence of truth and of the spirit of God, avert it! 

Venerable and heroic reformers, who arose in 
the name of an inspiring God amidst the surround- 
ing desolation of Zion and the fury of an apostate 
Church; who dared to be the champions of truth 
and piety, when the one was denounced and for- 
gotten, and the other extinguished in the super- 
stition of the age — was it for this ye Luthcrs and 
Calvins, ye Melancthons and Zwingles, that ye 
jeoparded your lives, your worldly all, drew down 
upon yourselves the fulminations and the curses 
of the Vatican, and confronted a Popish world? 
For this did the cloud of martyrs in the struggles 
of that period endure the utmost tortures of cruelty 
enraged by defeat, and pour out their blood like 



206 PERILS OF POPERY. 

streams of water to satiate its vengeance ? Ah ! 
little did they think that the sacred rights and lib- 
erties for which they plead and fought, and which 
they succeeded to secure, would ever be forfeited 
by an unworthy and ungrateful posterity, for 
whom as well as for themselves they achieved the 
victory ; that the very bosom of Protestantism 
should betray its dearest rights, and embosom the 
very principles which they discarded; that their 
latest posterity should fail to appreciate, and cease 
to watch and to guard with a jealous circumspec- 
tion, the sacred deposit their banishments, and 
confiscations, and sweat, and tortures, and blood, 
and lives procured them ; that the nineteenth cen- 
century should witness Protestant Christendom 
asleep, Popery on the highway to an ascendency 
from which they hurled it in their might, the mid- 
dle w?ill of partition torn down by sacrilegious 
hands made strong in Protestant institutions of 
learning ; and Rome triumphing and insulting in 
confident anticipation of her ancient sway. No, 
no ! They never dreamt of such a calamity. 
Had they, it might have paralyzed their mighty 
energies. They thought that they were planting 
institutions on the demolition of Antichrist's king- 
dom, never to vanish or to be superseded till the 
wreck of matter and the end of time. 



207 



CHAPTER IV. 



CONCLUSION 



It is cause of unbounded gratitude that God, 
who made previous arrangements for the intro- 
duction of the Gospel, and also provided by his 
wonder-working providence for the success of 
the Reformation, has no less signally fortified our 
age with the means of safety against the resus- 
citated zeal of Popery. The revival of pure and 
evangelical religion which distinguishes the past 
century, having (like the ancient Ark the peo- 
ple of God) guided the Christian world through 
thick perils already, will not fail if sustained and 
borne forward to pilot it through the present dif- 
ficulties. How hopeless would be the case of 
the world at this juncture if reposing undisturbed 
in the arms of a mere formal Protestantism ! 

It has long been the boast of the established 
clergy, and the subject of their universal and un- 
tiring eulogium and highest panegyric, that the 
Church of England was the fortress and defence 
of the British nation against the recurrence of 



208 PERILS OP POPERY. 

Popish sway. Take an instance among the 
most moderate and unadorned. " The value of 
our religious establishment," (says one of its 
learned prelates of no ordinary genius,*) " ought to 
be very much heightened in our esteem, by con- 
sidering what it is a security from; 1 mean that 
great corruption of Christianity, .Popery, which 
is ever hard at work to bring us again under its 
yoke.' Had he lived a century later, had he 
lived to the present day, methinks he would be 
tempted to reverse his language; and then it 
would read — the inutility of our religious esta- 
blishment ought to be clearly seen and confessed 
by considering what it is a stepping-stone to ; I 
mean that great corruption of Christianity, Po- 
pery, since it (the establishment) is hard at work 
to bring us again into bondage. This occurrence 
in the British establishment is an excellent com- 
ment on the general utility of such institutions. 
May the British people awake to the folly of any 
longer tolerating such an incumbrance ! May this 
treach:> y on its part hasten its long merited doom; 
and the aroused strength of the dissenting and 
Methodist bodies at last effect the downfall of 



* Bishop Butler, author of the Analogy, in Sermon xx, deli- 
vered before the House of Lords, June 11, 1747. 



PERILS OF POPERY. 209 

this ever-active engine of oppression to the 
nation ! Such are our good wishes ! We may 
congratulate the British nation that she has other 
friends, and better fortresses and defences at this 
alarming crisis than her hierarchy affords her. 

In this conjucture to whom should England 
look but to the successors of the men who, in a 
state of things which a Tillotson and others de- 
plored and bewailed, but could not remedy — 
when their instructors for the most part were 
causing the people to err and leading them blind- 
folded to their common catastrophe of perdition — 
when a pagan morality had assumed the place 
of evangelical truth in the temples of Christianity 
— when those who had the sagacity or the judg- 
ment to discover the religious farce that was 
playing around them in the name of Christianity, 
for the most part, not distinguishing between 
the reality and the profession, were. concluding 
all religion delusion, and its professors either 
dupes or impostors on the world — when society 
was divided into formalists and sceptics, the por- 
tion whose prejudices in favor of religion were 
not so inveterate as to be proof against its cor- 
ruptions secretly or openly renouncing.it, popular 
infidelity threatening the world, and England on 
the highway to a similar revolution to that of 



210 PERILS OP POPERY. 

France, — to whom should the British Empire look 
in this conjuctirre but to the successors of the 
men who in these critical times arose in the 
might of an inspiring God to her rescue ? Such 
was the age which gave birth to our Methodism 
and her Wesleys and her Whitefields. And such 
was the crisis at which the revival of religion so 
distinguished, kindled by a spark of grace, (in the 
University of Oxford too) broke forth; which has 
since rekindled the Reformation fires on numer- 
ous altars throughout Chiistendom, removed the 
chill of death which had seized the vitals of the 
Church; and which dissipated the fogs and rolled 
back the tide of infidelity which threatened to 
overflow the world, sweeping away not only the 
forms, the monuments, but the very name and 
every vestige of Christianity from the face of the 
earth. 

This conservatory influence of evangelism is 
equally if not more needed in this country than 
even in England. The sovereignty of the people 
creates a necessity of the highest general intelli- 
gence and virtue in order to its tranquility and the 
perpetuity of its institutions. Popular preaching 
is a main source of the refinement of public sen- 
timent and manners; and evangelism is all in 
motion, East, West, North and South, in the cities 



P^rtiLfc OF POPERY. 211 

and in the villages, in the back-woods as well as 
in the older and more populous regions, on her 
own grand, magnificent, apostolical and efficient 
scale. But how shall this government secure 
itself against the perils of Popery, strengthening 
by emigration and other causes ? Not tolerate it 
— proscribe it as an enemy to the country? No; 
its constitution guarantees an almost unbounded 
toleration — a toleration which reaches to that 
extreme where perhaps it ceases to be a virtue. 
Deny the stranger, the foreigner, the alien, an 
asylum within her shores ? Let down the flood- 
gates of emigration ? No — no. Methinks they 
never will. Proud of the distinguishing, princi- 
ples of equal rights and of universal toleration, 
inwoven throughout their whole political code, 
they will instinctively recoil at the thought of 
taking measures to prevent the ascendancy of 
errors even the most odious, however ominous 
of disaster to the nation. Here, where they have 
no practical knowledge of Church and State 
union, where there is no dominant and ruling 
sect, where the Constitution vetoes any interfer- 
ence of the secular authority in merely religious 
matters, they seem to take no cognizance of 
religious bodies whatever. Their motto is, Let 
the Church take care of itself and the Govern- 



212 PERILS OF POPERY. 

ment will take care of itself. Religion and politics 
are so dissociated in their minds, and seem to 
them to be such very distinct things, that they 
will be slow to perceive how in any case the re- 
ligious views and principles of men can influence 
their political conduct. As to any legislation 
upon this subject, they will rather be unsuspect- 
ing to folly, and tolerant to madness. Where 
then is this nation to look for succour against its 
danger from this wide-spread religious sect, ga- 
thering annually numerical strength from foreign 
quarters; stepping out of their appropriate sphere 
and assuming a politico-ecclesiastical attitude; 
marshalled under a foreign absolute head; con- 
taining principles essentially antagonist to those 
upon which its institutions repose ; and display- 
ing even now a threatening aspect upon its esta- 
blished form of government. Where, I ask ? To 
the Church. The sun of this nation shall not go 
down amid the shades of Popish superstition and 
despotism, till a long poised victory has been 
won, a hard contested battle fought, and her 
brow encircled with the wreath of martyrdom. 

To the Church is confided the salvation of this 
nation in a more than merely religious sense. 
We know but two methods of effecting it — the 
prevention of foreign emigration, or the conver- 



PERILS OF POPERY. 213 

lib!), the religious emancipation of the emigrants 
from foreign inQuence by the power of the Gospel. 
The first is at present impracticable, would per- 
haps be unwise, and is likely to be resorted to 
too late should it ever be deemed necessary. 
The latter is the true policy of this country. Will 
the Protestant Church prove traitor to her high 
trust, or the nation so reckless of its interest as 
not to sustain her ? 

It is the business of the Church, the Protestant 
Church, not only to secure her people against the 
proselyting movements of the Papal clergy, but, 
if possible, to force the bulwarks of her enemies, 
and press the battle within their gates. Though 
we propose, as Christians, no disfranchisement 
of our Romish fellow-citizens, no restriction what- 
ever of their privileges as citizens of our country, 
or as emigrants from foreign lands, nor even the 
letting down of the floodgates of emigration, yet, 
the enterprise of Protestantism should go forth 
winged with holy ardor and armed with the 
sword of etherial temper, in a warfare of love, for 
their emancipation from the bondage of ignorance 
and superstition. Upon that ignorance and super- 
stition, we are apt to imagine the etherial sword 
of truth must lose its edge, or glance without ex- 
ecution as upon the scaly hide of the leviathan. 



214 PERILS OF POPERY. 

What! shall the impotency that has maked our 
hitherto puny efforts abash our hope, and dis- 
courage us from future enterprise ? No ! But 
with the spirit and the zeal, and the perseverance 
that inspired and characterized the instruments 
of the Reformation, let us on to the charge, and 
victory more or less will crown our energy. Is 
not the prevalent truth of the Reformation ours ? 
Are not the doctrines which once revolutionized 
the Papal empire ours? All but the spirit, the 
energy, the intrepidity of the Reformers are ours? 
Why then, not rally to the onset ? By this time, 
had the same spirit of intrepidity and zeal actuated 
their successors for the last three centuries, the 
Papal power instead of putting forth new energies 
and anticipating new triumphs, might be ex- 
tinct, and its throne not only upset but annihi- 
lated. Shall we confess it without a flush of 
shame burning on our cheeks — shall we be con 
tent, that divine truth, so potent in their hands, 
has become utterly powerless in ours: that the 
weapons which achieved so glorious a victory, 
which shook from half Christendom, pervaded 
with the universal ignorance, and error, and 
superstition of the fourteenth century, the Papal 
fetters, can effect no great and important triumphs 
amid, and aided by the tolerance and luminous- 



PERILS OF POPERY. 215 

ness (for which, under God, thanks be to Protest- 
antism) of the nineteenth ? Perhaps these cir- 
cumstances more than countervail the fresh diffi- 
culty arising from the changed external aspect of 
the Papal Church. For it must be confessed we 
have this additional difficulty to encounter, that 
Popery, surrounded by Protestant influences; 
dragged into the light of truth at the Reformation 
till she was startled at the reflection of her own 
hideousness ; her power circumscribed and crip- 
pled, and too impotent to carry out her former 
enormities, has veiled herself to superficial eyes, 
put on the exterior of modesty, and attempts, that 
she may gain her selfish and ambitious ends, to 
impose herself upon mankind as reclaimed to 
tolerance and virtue, without the recantation of 
a single licentious principle. But if at the Re- 
formation she only needed to be exhibited to have 
her naked deformity detected ; if her impurities and 
abominations were too startling to fail of convic- 
tion ; if then she was seen clad in guilt, and red 
and reeling with blood ; in our day we have all 
the essential and unaltered features of the system, 
all its elements of absurdity and cruelty, all the 
principles which legitimately and demonstrably 
tend to the same issues, to expose to the view of 
her shrinking votaries. We can at the worst but 



216 PERILS OF POPERY. 

gloriously fail in the trial. Let us then seek the 
emancipation of her deluded votaries settled 
among us, and greet with the light of salvation, 
with the rich boon of religious as well as civil 
freedom, her annual transportations as they land 
upon our shores. 

Both the other side the Atlantic and this we 
have evidence that the Gospel blade has neither 
lost- its edge nor its power to wound this pro- 
phetic beast. The success of the evangelical 
ministry against the noon-day heresy there, and 
that of our missionary operations here, are fraught 
with encouragement to commence the warfare on 
a sublimer scale. In the one case the effect has 
been to combine and inspire the dissenting 
churches, and is likely to tempt the long impend- 
ing fate of a seqularised religious system. In the 
other, though of a more threatening nature, simi- 
lar results may succeed to prompt and vigorous 
measures. Especially the German population in- 
vite our sanguine efforts; and presents a field, if 
not ripe for the harvest, at least ready for cul- 
tivation. 

Our victory as a nation, if we shall win the day 
in this country, may we not hope to be bloodless? 
We cannot, however, that it will be uncostly. A 
costly victory it must be ; in missionary toil and 



PERILS OF POPERY. 217 

support, or in some other way. A few thinly 
scattered laborers will not be sufficient; there 
must be hosts on the field to meet the exigency 
of the case. Ample contributions and invincible 
perseverance will be required to succeed.. There 
is a tax upon our liberties : in. some way or other 
we must pay it. Far costlier may they prove if 
we neglect this grand enterprise on its most mag- 
nificent scale. Its magnitude demands grand 
arrangements, and its urgency expedition. Nay, 
await that future remedy ; let the present oppor- 
tunity pass unimproved, and you, or posterity may 
learn, that its improvement had been cheap at any 
cost. 

It must enter into our plan of operation, as an 
important and indispensable consideration, if we 
would successfully encounter this persevering sect, 
not only to equal them in our efforts to supply the 
nation with collegiate and academical opportuni- 
ties, but to hold out equal, if not superior, pecu- 
niary ad vantages, 1 and exalt the standard of our 
institutions to that pitch at which the insinuations 
artfully depositing by the Papal clergy, and gain- 
ing ground among the rising generation, will fall 
powerless at their bases. In this remark it is not 
meant to depreciate our Protestant institutions of 
learning: on the contrary, we are not in the least 



218 PERILS OF POPERY. 

willing to cede the correctness of this Jesuitical 
artifice — a shallow one it is; but still it will be 
found increasingly necessary to attend to these 
objects ; and the imputation, so far as it has suc- 
ceeded, must be promptly met and eradicated. 
Cannot the Protestant Church, aided by the pa- 
triotism of the land, (and what patriot will not aid 
heart and soul,) both in a pecuniary and literary 
point of view, cope with the Papal clergy, though 
backed by the wealth and influence of Papal Eu- 
rope in these respects? To deny they can would 
be preposterous ; and since they ought to do so, 
we hope and believe they will. 

But this is not all we have to propose. No ; 
we would propose a dreadful retaliation upon the 
Pontiff and Papal hierarchy — a retaliation by 
moral means — to the utmost of the ability of Pro- 
testant Christendom, or of the Protestant commu- 
nity in the United Stales. Let us press the battle 
to the very basis of the Vatican itself— the spirit 
of apostles and reformers would effect it, and 
shake the ghastly tyrant from his ancient, but now 
unsettled throne. Is not Italy ripe for the Protest- 
ant sickle? Perhaps France is not less so; and 
she holds us in the arrears of gratitude. Let Pro- 
testant Christendom arise in her strength, let her 
buckle on her armor and go forth with the ma- 



PERILS OP POPERY. 219 

jesty of the Lord of hosts in her front, and we 
still may hope that the recent revival of Popish 
seal shall have no other effect but to seal her doom 
and destiny; that it may but hasten her ever-im- 
pending and predicted overthrow, and be regarded 
as the prelude of her signal downfall— as the tran- 
sient bursts of an expiring flame precede its ex- 
tinguishment. 

It cannot be regarded in any other light than as 
an ill-faced omen of the times, that while the 
Protestantism of our country should be rallying 
and concentrating all its strength and energy up- 
on the common foe, she is deeply agitated by ele- 
ments of internal disorder and convulsion. The 
agents of the enemy, on the contrary, are united, 
and all together looking towards the grand re-> 
suit ; each in his allotted sphere is operating to- 
wards the common end, and feels his private or 
local interests involved in the success of the gen- 
eral cause. Let us take a lesson of our enemy ; 
let the distinctions of sect and party, and all minor 
considerations sink down to their proper level; 
and let Protestantism present for once a united, 
determinate, and disciplined array against the 
common enemy. Let us adopt for our universal 
motto the words of the officer to the flying sol- 
dier, who, seizing him, and wheeling his front to 



220 PERILS OF POPERY. 

the foe, cried out, " Look that way for the 
enemy? 

What are we doing? what have we been con- 
templating to check the growing power and ex- 
panding influence of this arch-invader of our coun- 
try? Just nothing, nothing! Some, perhaps, 
wrapped up in the chrysalis of their own. genera- 
tion, whose selfishness and narrow-hearted sym- 
pathies will not allow their thoughts and energies 
to be excited into futurity, are content to let anti- 
christ aspire and advance without resistance, be- 
cause they regard his triumphant elevation, should 
it ever occur, as an event so distant in futurity 
that it has no concern with the present age. To 
men, (pardon the imputation,) to such reptile 
spirits it might be adjudged supererogatory to 
drop a word. That man, who seeing the most 
distant danger to his country from the genius and 
operation of this system, would be unexcited, un- 
alarmed, and unaroused to inquiry or activity to 
check it, imbosoms a heart alien to the principles 
and the love of his country ; and merely to depre- 
cate the feared event, in cool composure of our 
energies, is but to cherish a spirit of enthusiasm, 
and traitorous in the extreme. 

Protestants, children of Protestant sires, de- 
scendants of Protestant martyrs, and inheritors of 



PERILS OF POPERY. 221 

the rich blessings of Protestant institutions; ye 
who can stand by and see the growing power and 
influence of that tyrannic hierarch they resisted, 
without alarm and painful anxiety; consent to 
forfeit for posterity your invaluable privileges, be- 
tray by indifference your sacred rights, and by 
conniving let the foe succeed : but the noble spirits 
whose energies are aroused and rallied at the bare 
mention of slavery, who awake and burn at the 
first intimation of the foe's design, will continue to 
mark his advance, to resist his progress, and to 
spurn the forging chains whose imposition your 
slumber tempts. 

Surely the combination of errorists, inspired 
with a fresh enthusiasm against the principles 
which distinguished the Protestant Reformation, 
indicates the desperate struggle it requires to re- 
trieve the waning fortunes of Satan's kingdom, 
and maintain his foothold on the earth. Although 
we cannot with some consider " our country safe 
from Romanism," or rather from its own indif- 
ferentism, what will be the final upshot is to us 
by no means dubious. Our faith fixes amid all 
the antagonist principles in operation around us, 
which would suspend the decision of the mere 
speculator, on the sure word of prophecy. There 
we find the grand destiny, the ultimate triumph of 

8 



222 PERILS OF POPERY. 

truth foretold, responsive to our anxious inquiries; 
and the prediction is at once satisfying to our faith 
and glorious to our hope. u He that sitteth in the 
heavens shall laugh — the Lord shall have them in 
derision." Messiah's enemies, though earth with 
hell he leagued, shall be clothed with shame. But 
may we not expect trying conflict, perhaps bloody 
conflict, in the interim ? Present signs are omi- 
nous. But the principles of the Reformation must 
eventually make their, way, though dyed in blood, 
though stemming the torrent of its own blood, 
though through the agonies and shrieks of its own 
children, to universal ascendancy, transforming 
the wailings of our suffering Protestantism into 
the universal jubilant shout of millenial triumph. 
Methinks I see that luminous cross which inspired 
with courage and crowned with success the em- 
peror of old, hung out in the heavens to the view 
of the militant Church, with the inscription upon 
it — by this conquer ! Amen. As its past vic- 
tories justify our confidence, may they rally all 
our latent energies ! 



APPENDIX. 



LATEST (OR TRENTINE) EDITION OF POPERY. 

We submit the following twelve articles of the Romish 
faith to the consideration of our readers, offering them as 
we offer the holy Scriptures — without note or comment. 
They are the distinguishing tenets of Popery, from the 
famous Bull of Pope Pius IV. dated at Rome A. D. 1564, 
in the ides of November, and fifth year of his pontificate; 
and to be found at the end of the printed canons and de- 
crees of the Council of Trent. They are not to be re- 
garded as questionable opinions, but as necessary articles 
of faith, the words of the creed itself, which all Papists 
are obliged to believe and profess in order to salvation; 
and to which all who enter into religious orders in the 
Romish Church are solemnly sworn. 

1. I do also (that is, together with the articles of the 
Apostles' Creed) most firmly admit and embrace the 
Apostolical and Ecclesiastical traditions, and all other 
observations and constitutions of the same (that is the 
Romish) Church. 

2. I do admit the sacred Scriptures in the same sense 
that holy Mother Church doth ; whose business it is to 
judge of the true sense and interpretation of them ; which 
I will receive and interpret according to the unanimous 
consent of the Fathers. 

3. I do profess and believe that there are seven sacra- 
ments of the new law, truly and properly so called, insti- 



224 APPENDIX. 

tuted by Jesus Christ our Lord, and necessary to the sal- 
vation of mankind, though not all of them to every per- 
son. These are Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Pen- 
nance, Extreme Unction, Orders, and Marriage, which 
do all of them confer grace. And I do believe that of 
these, Baptism, Confirmation, and Orders, may not be re- 
peated without sacrilege. I do also receive and admit 
the received and approved rites of the Catholic (that is 
Roman) Church, in her solemn administration of the 
above-said sacraments. 

4. I do receive all and every thing that hath been de- 
fined and declared by the holy Council of Trent concern- 
ing original sin and justification. 

5. I do profess that in the Mass there is offered to God 
a true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice for the quick 
and the dead : and that in the most holy sacrament of the 
Eucharist, there is truly, really, and substantially the 
body and blood, .together with the soul and divinity of 
our Lord Jesus 'Christ ; and that there is a conversion 
made of the whole substance of the bread into the body, 
and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood ; 
which conversion the Catholic Church calls transubstan- 
tiation. 

6. I confess that under one kind only, whole and en- 
tire Christ, and a true sacrament, is taken and received. 

7. I do firmly believe that there is a purgatory, and 
that the souls kept prisoners there do receive help by the 
suffrages of the faithful. 

8. 1 do likewise believe that the saints reigning with 
Christ are to be worshipped and prayed unto, and that 
they do offer prayers unto God for us, and that their relics 
are to be had in veneration. 

9. I do most firmly assert, that the images of Christ, 
of the blessed Virgin, the mother of God, and of other 
saints, ought to be had and retained, and that due honor 
and veneration ought to be given to them. 

10. I do affirm that the power of indulgences was left 
by Christ in the Church, and that the use of them is very 
beneficial to Christian people. 



APPENDIX. 225 

11. I do acknowledge the holy catholic and apostolic 
Roman Church to be the mother and mistress of all 
churches : and I do promise and swear true obedience to 
the Bishop of Rome, the successor of St. Peter, the 
prince of the apostles, and vicar of Jesus Christ. 

12. I do undoubtedly receive and profess all other 
things which have been delivered, defined, and declared 
by the sacred canons and aecumenical councils, and 
especially by the holy synod of Trent ; and all things 
contrary thereunto, and all heresies condemned, rejected, 
and anathematized by the Church, I do likewise condemn, 
reject, and anathematize. 



A VOICE "FROM THE BASILIC OF ST. PETER." 

We cannot omit giving a few extracts from the Pope's 
Bull, dated May 8th, 1844, which has lately appeared 
in many of our religious papers (why not the secular 
press also]) and which we precede with the remarks 
of the London Times, which thus speaks of the cause 
of the Bull, as well as of the Bull itself: 

" Gregory the Sixteenth's lines are cast in any but 
pleasant places. His troubles rival those of the Grand 
Turk. The Jews of Ancona lately roused his ire and 
provoked their own prosecutions ; next the wretched mis- 
government of the Legations disturbed the tranquility of 
Monsignore Mori Cappellari ; and now his reverence, in 
full dress and crook in hand, has taken at a less mun- 
dane cause of alarm than industrious Jews or discon- 
tented subjects. What's that 7 The old cause— the 
cause that struck terror into the heart of Pius V., that 
made Leo XL < shake in his shoes,' and that provoked 
the bile of Pius VII. — the cause against which general 
councils have legislated, and the whole Romish priest- 
hood is confederated— simply the Bible. Nothing more* 



226 APPENDIX. 

The most timid of his infallible predecessors were not 
more alarmed at the circulation of the Bible than is the 
infallible Gregory XVI., though some of them have, it is 
certain, been more rational and cautious in giving expres- 
sions to their fright. The Pope has denounced the circu- 
lation of the Bible in terms more absurd and wicked than 
those of Dr. Slop's curse. So at least we learn from a 
e Circular Letter from His Holiness the Pope to all Patri- 
archs, Primates, Archbishops, and Bishops,' — a docu- 
ment equally distinguished for inane verbosity of style 
and anti- Christianism in object ; which is as lengthy and 
illogical as it is iniquitous ; and is only more discredita- 
ble to his infallibility's theology than it is to his secular 
learning. The exertions of the American Christian 
League against Romanism in its stronghold, Italy, aim, 
we are told, at propagating ' insane indifference to all re- 
ligion.' It is, indeed, against those exertions that the 
paper pellets of the Vatican are now chiefly directed, and 
after a fashion worthy of Romanist learning." 

We exceedingly regret that our limits will not admit 
the whole Circular; but we offer the more important 
parts, italicising and capitalising those portions to which 
we would invite more particular attention. 

After a lengthy enumeration of the decrees and 
regulations of his predecessors in relation to the cir- 
culation of the Holy Scriptures, from the time of Inno- 
cent III. to that of Pius VIII, , his immediate pre- 
decessor ; substantially contained in the regulations pre- 
fixed to the list of prohibited books, viz. : "that the 
reading of the Holy Bible, translated into the vulgar 
tongue, should not be permitted, except to those whom it 
might be deemed necessarv to confirm in the faith and 
piety ;" and the provision superadded by BenedictXIV., 
" that no version whatever should be suffered to be read 
but those which should be approved of by the Holy See, 



APPENDIX. 227 

accompanied by notes derived from the writings of the 
Holy Fathers, or other learned and Catholic authors." 
After this enumeration Pope Gregory XVI. adds : 

"We, in short, who succeed them, notwithstanding 
our great unworthiness, have not ceased to be solicitous 
on this subject, and have especially studied to bring to 
the recollection of the faithful the several rules which 
have been successively laid down with regard to the vul- 
gar versions of the Holy Books." 

The Christian League, a society lately formed in 
New-York, having for its object the circulation of the 
Bible in the common tongue, and Protestant books, in 
Italy and even in Rome itself, attracts a large share of 
Gregory's attention, and calls forth his holy ire and im- 
measured denunciation. After starting at the idea of a 
"Protestant League, composed of individuals of every na- 
tion," against Popery in its stronghold — after confound- 
ing the principles of Christian liberty with "an in- 
sane indifference to all religion"— and liberty of con- 
science with "liberty to err ;" and charging them with 
the awful intention of disseminating, by various expe- 
dients, but chiefly through disaffected Italians, the Bible, 
and "WORSE BOOKS STILL!" his Holiness pro- 
ceeds: 

" Scarcely were we made aware of these facts but we 
were profoundly grieved on reflecting upon the danger 
which threatened not only remote countries, but the very 
centre of unity itself; and we have been anxious to de- 
fend religion against the like manoeuvres. Although 
there be no reason to apprehend the destruction of St. 
Peter's See at any time, in which the Lord our God has 
placed the immovable foundations of his Church, yet we 



228 APPENDIX. 

are bound to maintain its authority. The holy duties of 
our apostolic ministry remind us of the awful account 
which the Sovereign Prince of Shepherds will exact of 
us for the growing tares which an enemy's hand may 
have sown in the Lord's field during our sleep, and for 
the sheep which are entrusted to us, if any perish 
through our fault. Wherefore, having consulted some of 
the Cardinal Holy Romish Church, after having duly ex- 
amined with them every thing, and listened to their ad- 
vice, we have decided, venerable brothers, on addressing 
you this letter, by which we again condemn the Bible so- 
cieties, reproved long ago by our predecessors ; and by 
virtue of the supreme authority of our apostleship, we re- 
prove by name, and condemn the aforesaid society called 
the Christian League, formed last year at New-York : 
it, together with every other society associated with it, 
or which may become so. Let all know, then, the enor- 
mity of the sin against God and his church which they 
are guilty of who dare to associate themselves with any 
of these societies, or abet them in any way. 'Moreover, 
we confirm and renew the decrees recited above, delivered 
in former times by apostolic authority against the publi- 
cation, distribution, reading, and posession of books of 
the Holy Scriptures, translated into the vulgar tongue. 
With reference to the works of whatsoever writer, we 
call to mind the observances of the general rules and de- 
crees of our predecessors, to be found prefixed to the in- 
dex of prohibited books ; and we invite the faithful to be 
upon their guard, not only against the books named in 
the index, but also against those prescribed in the gen- 
eral prescriptions. 

"As for yourselves, my venerable brethren, called as you 
are to divide our solicitude, we recommend you earnestly 
in the Lord to announce and proclaim, in convenient 
time and place, to the people confided in your care, those 
Apostolic orders, and to labor carefully to separate the 
faithful sheep from the contagion of the Christian League 
— from those who have become its auxiliaries no less than 
those who belong to other Bible societies, — and from all 



APPENDIX. 229 



who have any communication with them. You are, con- 
sequently, enjoined to remove from the hands of the 

FAITHFUL ALIKE THE BlBLES IN THE VULGAR TONGUE, 

which may have been printed contrary to the decrees 
above-mentioned of the Sovereign Pontiffs, and every 
book prescribed and condemned, and to see that they 
learn, through your admonition and authority, what pas- 
turages are salutary and what pernicious and mortal." 



WHO SHALL TEACH CHINA 1 

Providence has now thrown back the doors of China, 
and has opened a path, if not into the interior of China, 
at least into a portion of the empire. The great wall is 
tottering. Where are the troops who are to march up 
and take possession of the land ! I will tell you ; at 
Rome! They are already in motion. Protestant Chris- 
tians of Europe and America — Protestant Christians of 
every section of the Christian Church, look at Rome! 
look at China ! Rome is looking at it. Hasten to China ! 
Rome is hastening thither ; and unless we are all on the 
alert, China will yet belong to Rome. With a sublime 
ambition she is aiming at the celestial empire ; and with 
a minute one, (for all policy is hers,) she is stooping 
down to the little spots of Polynesia. We must be upon 
the alert, or Rome will yet possess the world. Let us 
recollect that she states one of the evidences of her apos- 
tolicity to be her universality. She sees that Protestant- 
ism is rising up to dispute with her that evidence of apos- 
toiicity, and she is planting her missionaries all round 
the globe. We shall have to fight with the See of Rome 
for almost every mission which we have ; but with God 
on our side, we have no need to fear on whom will rest 
the victory. 

Rev, J. A. James, at London Miss* Soc. 



230 APPENDIX. 

STATISTICS, ETC. 

The following is from Dr. Durbin's " Observations 
in Europe," recently published ; and which, we regret, 
has but at this late hour come into our hands : 

" The wealth of the Catholic world is at this hour at 
the service of the great enterprise she has set on foot, to 
recover all Christians again to her communion. The chief 
fields of her exertion are, the East, among the Greek, 
Armenian, and Nestorian Christians; and among the 
Protestants in Germany, Great Britain, and the United 
States. She not only proposes to bring the Christian 
population again within her pale, but also to enter into 
every open door, and preocupy the ground among the 
heathen, and in all new countries. No sooner was the 
armistice concluded between England and China, than 
forty missionaries were dispatched thither ; as soon as 
the French established themselves in Algeria, it was 
erected into a bishopric, and missionaries sent to instruct 
the population. Before the bill for, the occupation of 
Oregon is introduced into Congress, the territory is 
erected into a bishopric, and an active, intelligent pre- 
late appointed to take possession. The missionary policy 
of the Roman Catholic Church has been developed of 
late to a degree unparalleled in her history. She may, 
indeed, with truth be called a Missionary Church, Her 
vast population of 160 millions, is, in reality, one enthu- 
siastic missionary society, directedby a central power at 
Rome. And while Protestants have been biting and de- 
vouring one another, and thus wasting their strength and 
treasure, this Catholic Missionary Society has completed 
the adaptation of its machinery to its great enterprise; has 
distributed it over all the earth, and the astounding results 
of its perfect and powerful action have at length startled 
the Protestant world, and inspired it with apprehension. 

"The following statistics will show the missionary cha- 
racter of this church and the extension of her machinery. 
It will be observed that England is regarded as a mis- 
sionary field, and that there are 624 missionaries at work 
amid a missionary population of one million. 



APPENDIX. 



231 



MISSIONS. * 
Consisting of Vicariates and Prefectures. 





EUROPE. 








States. 


Vic. Apost. 


Missionaries. 


Population. 


England 


. 8 




624 


1,000,000 


Nassau } . . . 


. 00 




00 


180,000 


Low Countries 


, 5 




1,742 


1,304,890 


Gibraltar 


1 




10 


13,000 


Sweden and Norway 


. 1 




2 


2,000 


Denmark ». 


1 




7 


3,000 


Scotland 


. 3 




86 


100,000 


Saxony . 


00 




00 


*28,000 


Saxe-Weimar 


. 00 




00 


10,174 


Wittemberg 


00 




00 


512,333 


Bukovina and Neoplanta 


. 1 




00 


14,000 


Italo-Greeks 


3 




144 


30,000 


Constantinople 


. 1 




46 


10,000 


Turkish Dalmatia 


00 




7 


7,206 


Moldavia and Wallachia 


. 2 




30 


64,000 


Bosnia . 


1 




106 


128,672 


Bulgaria 


. 2 
29 




12 


6,309 




2,816 


3,413,584 




ASIA. 








States. < V 


ic. Apost. 


Prefect. Miss. 


Population. 


Turkey in Asia 


3 


1 


00 


12,000 


India west of the Ganges 


. 7 


00 


00 


758,000 


India beyond the Ganges . 


6 


00 


179 


457,000 


China . . 


. 10 

26 


00 

1 


160 
339 


360,000 




1,577,000 




&.FRICA. 








Abyssinia 


00 


1 


5 






Bourbon, Island . 


. 00 


1 


12 


100,000 


Cape of Good Hope . 


1 


00 


4 


2,000 


Egypt 


. 2 


00 


50 


10,000 


Guinea , x 


1 


00 


16 





* Besides this, is the German Confederacy, in which are three Vicars 
Apostolic, and a Catholic population amounting to 2,068,968. 



464 APPENDI: 

Vic, A post. 
Madagascar . .. .00 
Morocco, Empire . . .00 
Mauritius .... 1 
Senegal . . . . 00 
Tripoli . . . . 00 
Tunis .... 00 


Prefect 

1 

1 

00 

1 
1 
1 

7 
00 

1 

00 
00 
00 
00 

1 

2 

00 
00 

00 
THEIR 
00 
00 

7 

2 

00 


. Miss. 
6 
1 
6 
2 
4 
6 

112 

00 

00 

5 

00 
00 
00 
00 

5 

00 
00 

00 

POPULA 

2,816 

339 

112 

00 

00 


Population. 


300 

85,000 

25,000 

1,300 

7,600 


5 

AMERICA. 

English Northern Possessions 2 
French Possessions . . 00 
Texas, Republic . . 1 
Antilles . . . 3 
Hayti . . . . 1 
Guiana . 2 
French Guiana . .00 


231,200 

73,000 

1,300 

10,000 

256,000 

1,000,000 

24,000 

16,000 


9 

OCEANICA. 

Batavia .... 1 
Western Ocean . . 1 


1,380,300 

10,000 
50,000 


2 
SUMMARY OF MISSIONS AND 
Europe . . . .29 
Asia .... 26 

Africa 5 

America .... 9 
Oceanica .... 2 


60,000 

TION. 

3,413,584 

1,577,000 

231,200 

1,380,300 

60,000 



Total ... 71 9 3,267 5,662,084 

" The United States are also regarded as missionary 
ground, and the Roman Catholic Church is established 
in our midst, and is incorporating herself with our popu- 
lation, as a great element of power. The extent of her 
operations in the United States may be inferred from the 
following summary, derived from the same authentic 
source : 

Catholic Statistics in the United States. 

J)iocesses 21 

Apostolic Vicariate ...... . 1 



APPENDIX. 



233 



Bishops . . . . . . ' . . . .17 

Bishops elect .... 

Number of Priests . 

" u Churches 
Other stations . . . 

Ecclesiastical Seminaries 
Clerical Students 

Literary Institutions for young men 
Female Academies 
Elementary schools everywhere throug 

diocesses 
Periodical publications 



hout most of the 



8 

634 
611 

461 
19 

261 
16 
48 



15 



" The preceding are the missionary statistics of the 
Church, and show nearly four thousand missionaries act- 
ing upon a population of about seven millions. The fol- 
lowing table will show the established population of the 
Church, which may be called her home interest, and 
which, thoroughly imbued with the missionary spirit, 
furnishes the men, women (religious sisterhoods) and 
money for the great enterprise of conquering the world. 

General Statistics of the Roman Catholic Church. 

EUROPE. 



States. 


Archb'cs. 


Bish'cs. 


Dioc's. 


Population. 


Albania and Epirus 


2 


4 


6 


88,788 


Austria 


. 9 


24 


33 


15,555,916 


Baden 


1 


00 


1 


852,824 


Bavaria 


. 2 


6 


8 


2,977,675 


Belgium 


1 


5 


6 


4,217,750 


Cracovia 


. 00 


1 


1 


142,202 


France 


. 15 


65 


80 


31,000,000 


Greece ... 


. 1 


3 


4 


22,900 


Hanover 


. 00 


2 


2 


216,758 


Hesse, Grand-duchy . 


. 00 


00 


00 


203,632 


Hohenzollern, Hechingen 


00 


00 


00 


21,000 


Hungary 


3 


25 


28 


7,578,122 


Ireland 


. 4 


23 


27 


7,500,000 


Ionian Islands 


1 


1 


2 


2,630 


Islands of Archipelago 


. 00 


1 


1 


160 


Lombardy, Ven. 


2 


17 


19 


4,645,594 


Lucca, Duchy 


. 1 


00 


1 


168,198 


Malta and Gozo 


1 


00 


1 


109,000 


Modena, Duchy 


. 2 


2 


4 


378,000 



234 


APPENDIX. 






States. 
Monaco, Principality 
Papal States 
Parma, Duchy 
Poland, Russian 
Portugal 
Prussia 
Rhenish Provinces 


Archb ? cs. 

. 00 

. 9 

2 

. 1 

4 

. 2 

1 

. 2 

. 00 

. 7 

1 

. 8 

. 00 

. 22 

3 

s . 1 


Bish'cs. 
00 
59 

4 

8 
17 

6 

4 

5 
00 
34 
00 
51 

4 
80 
18 
00 


Dioc's. 
00 
68 

6 

9 
31 

8 

5 

7 
00 
41 

1 
59 

4 

102 

21 

1 


Population. 
6,500 
2,732,436 
476,187 
3,887,313 
3,549,420 
5,612,556 


Russian Empire 

San Marino, Republic 

Sardinia 

Servia 

Spain 

Switzerland 

Two Sicilies 

Tuscany 

Prim. Archb. Armenian 


5,590,000 

7,600 

, 4,650,350 

10,000 

12,286,941 

882,854 

8,156,310 

1,436,785 

27,560 


Total in Europe . 


. 108 

ASIA. 


469 


577 


124,993,961 




Oriental Rite. 






Armenians, Patriarchat 
Chaldeans, " 
Greeks, Melch. or Cath. 
Maronites, Patriarchate 
Syrians " . 


eof 1 2 

5 5 

" . 7 5 

of 8 12 

2 4 

Latin Rite. 


3 

10 
12 

20 
6 


8,000 

17,218 

50,000 

500,000 

30,000 


Asiatic Turkey 
India, Portuguese . 
Persia . . 


. 1 
1 

. 00 

. 25. 


4 
1 
1 

34 


5 

2 
1 

59 


11,400 

538,000 

1,000 


Total in Asia . 


l,155,6fe 


Algiers . . 
Azores ... 
Canary Islands 
Cape Verde Islands 
Ceuta, Tangier, &c. 
Congo 
Madeira 
St. Thomas 


AFRICA 

. 00 

. 00 
. 00 

. 00 
. 00 

. 00 
. 00 

. 00 

. 00 


1 
1 
1 
1 

2 
1 
1 

1 

9 


1 
1 

1 
1 
% 
1 
1 
1 

9 


75,000 

225,000 

208,000 

80,000 

17,071 


112,500 
41,000 


Total in Africa 


758,571 



APPENDIX. 



235 



NORTH AMERICA. 






States. Archb'cs. 


Bish'cs. 


Dioc's. 


Population. 


English Possessions . . 1 


5 


6 


750,000 


United States . * 1 


15 


16 


1,300,000 


Mexico .... 1 


10 


11 


7,500,000 


Central America . . 1 


4 


5 


1,900,000 


West Indies . . .1 


2 


3 


1,020,862 


SOUTH AMERICA. 






United States of the South 1 


8 


9 


828,000 


Venezuela . . . 1 


2 


3 


945,348 


Bolivia .... 1 


2 


3 


1,300,000 


Peru .... 1 


4 


5 


1,700,000 


Chili 1 


4 


5 


1,400,000 


Paraguay ... 00 


1 


1 


250,000 


Uruguay . . . .00 


00 


00 


250,000 


States of the Plata . 1 


3 


4 


675,000 


Brazil .... 1 


7 


8 


5,000,000 



Total in America . 12 67 79 25,819,210 

OCEANICA. 

1 3 4 3,000,000 



Philippine Islands . 
Australia 

Total in Oceanica 



1 



2 



2 



50,000 
3,050,000 



Europe 

Asia 

Africa 

America 

Oceanica 



Total of Diocesses, with their Population, 

Diocesses. Population. 
577 124,993,961 



59 


], 155,618 


9 


758,751 


79 


25,819,210 


7 • 


3,050,000 



Total ..... 731 
To this add the missionary population 

I 
Population of the Catholic world 



155,777,540 

. 5,662,084 

161,439,624 



81 Here, then, we have a Roman Catholic population of 
one hundred and sixty millions. What is the force which 
Protestants can show in opposition ] Strictly speaking", 
not more than fifty millions. And if to the Protestant 
side we add the Greek, the Armenian, the Nestorian, 



236 APPENDIX. 

and other Christian communions in the East which re- 
ject the supremacy of the Pope, we could scarcely make 
up one hundred and twenty millions. But in the contest 
with Romanism, the Protestants cannot derive any effec- 
tive aid from the Eastern Christians ; because, in the 
essential doctrines of faith which divide the Protestants 
and Roman Catholics, the Eastern churches are gene- 
rally on the side of the Catholics. The main and almost 
only point in which they agree with Protestants is in the 
rejection of the Pope as the head of the Church on earth. 
The contest must lie, therefore, between the fifty millions 
of Protestants, strictly so called, and the one hundred 
and sixty millions of Catholics. It is important, there- 
fore, that the Protestant churches should well understand 
the force and policy of the Roman Catholic Church, con- 
sidered as an external institution acting upon society. The 
force, amounting to 1742 missionaries, employed in the 
Low Countries, ought to attract attention," 



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